Spring Has Come Early.

Here, now I stand.  I look and survey this life.  It's ups and downs, mountains and valleys.  All of the trials and joys that break and sustain us.  They come in waves.

The last few months have been beyond difficult, they have pulled me to my knees and broken me apart.  It was the grand finale to years of being displaced, waiting and hoping to settle, to find a home.

And home is coming.

I am excited, beyond terrified, blessed, and hopeful to announce that we are finally moving to Redding.  This week.

God has opened huge doors and rained blessing over us.

We are coming home with joy and celebration.

The long season of emptying and loneliness has ended.

Spring has indeed sprung.

I am amazed at God's goodness, his provision.  To credit this new transition to anything other than God's hand is to miss his opulent love, his unwavering faithfulness.

I have walked through the last few years, staring at God's face.  Eye to eye, ear to ear, desperate, hungry, and constantly unsatisfied.

I have grown in my ability to trust.  To rest, when hope has evaded me.  I have learned to let Jesus come close and breathe when my breath has gone out.

The last few weeks, as I have doubted and grown discouraged, I have been faced with a choice; wallow or choose joy.  As I delight in the goodness of God when nothing in life has changed, there is a mighty strength that sustains.  Grace has met me when I was most undeserving.

I am so excited to settle.  To stretch out our roots.  To give my children the joy of stability, the delight of family and friends.

I am terrified to relearn my place here, to find myself, after wandering in the wilderness.

Yet, in all of this, I have learned to walk, hopeful and trusting.  To rest when life comes, to laugh in chaos, and delight in the ache of waiting.

Looking forward to getting some consistency in our lives and sharing with you some of the lessons I've learned over the last four years of hardship and transition.

I may rest for a while.

Blessings to you in whatever season you find yourself.

When Life Does Not Go As Planned.

I had these fabulous plans of filling this New Year with blog posts from a warm corner in my kitchen.
Steaming coffee or tea in my hand while I regaled you with stories of my children's antics or delicious recipes.  I wanted to inspire your heart and refresh your mind.  This would be easy enough as the long awaited dream of my heart was finally coming true, my family was heading home and we were going to settle and stretch out our roots and enjoy all of the fruits of a life planted.

Then our plans fell flat before us and we stared at our dreams sinking like a long awaited drink into the every thirsty sand.

It was a little like the cartoons where they look at each other and shock, fear, anger, hurt, and grief run rampant across their expressive face.

We had to move, and all of our lives were packed carefully into boxes and placed into storage.  Necessities were tucked into suitcases and for the first week the kids and I stayed with family, hoping against hope everything would work out.  When the week stretched on we came to stay with Eric who was bunking with some friends.  We pushed our suitcases against a wall, grabbed mattresses out of storage, and have been walking daily through a season that is the aching epitome of waiting.

I had planned on going through this season like a brilliant star showing everyone how to exist when your expectations and plans crumble.  Then as the reality of what this looks like, keeping my children quiet, watching too many movies, living as carefully as we can in a home that is not ours, in a world we barely belong - I have crumbled.  Everything that was so important has been pushed behind me and my focus is on our hearts, how to go through this without being destroyed.  We have pulled in and are clinging to hope.

I have been cut off at the knees and I suffocate with my lack of power.

And here lurks the truth.  It is not in our stunning moments, it is not when everyone looks at our brilliance and points, to how effortlessly we maintain.  It's in our weakness, here, where pain and discomfort writhe, that we are made strong.  I don't like to share the hard things, sometimes I feel as if I play like a broken record.  But truth, in the moment, is better, than a story of hardship told on the mountaintop.

This is where we are.

A little room, tucked away in San Jose.  Waiting against hope that we'll be settled before spring.  That these seeds we're cradling in our hands will stand the test of time and we'll be planted as the weather warms and stretches and the dirt is ripe to hold our sacrifice.

The Arrival of School.

My baby boy is in kindergarten.

When you have a child, there are a million plans, a million dreams.  You are constantly saying things like,
"oh, well when they walk, then I can. . . "
"when they're weaned, then. . ."
"when they're potty trained, then. . ."
"when they can pick up, then. . ."
"when they can feed themselves, then. . ."

When you become a parent you lose all of the freedoms that you took for granted.  You learn what it's like to drink your coffee cold, how much less enjoyable it is to eat dinner while nursing.  You linger less and hurry more.  You are slapped in the face by all the can'ts that have suddenly taken over your life.  You begin to fantasize about all of the old freedoms you'll get back as your children grow.  It's almost like a giddy, guilty pleasure.
Oh, well I will drink a glass of wine when we go out, and linger over every bite of a two hour dinner, without having to get up fifty times.
Maybe you'll wear heels again.
Maybe you'll go back to work.
Maybe you'll read a book all the way through, rather than in bits and pieces throughout the year.

But, it all hinges on one thing.  Your baby getting older.  That wonderful, strange, pink thing you birthed that looked at you with barely focused eyes and woke you in the night and needed you, with every single ounce of their being.  That baby will grow.  They will need you less, they will focus on you less.  You will find yourself demanding their attention.  They will push from your kisses rather than lean in.  Your baby will find their own identity and they will demand that you see them as a separate being.

And it aches.


For a while, in that midnight haze of nursing, and changing, and feeding, they were a part of you.  Then they grew and while they still need you, they very, very slowly develop into their own little person.

You will find that you are so caught up in this change.  You'll revel in drinking a hot cup of coffee while they look at books beside you.  You'll enjoy pushing them on the swings and playing chase.  You will love the feeling of their hand in yours while you walk down the street.  Little freedoms, that at the time cost you nothing.  You simply enjoyed the growing beauty that you were carefully tending.

Then all at once, they have grown and now it is time to send them away.

They must go to school.  They must learn all of the things that are so very important.  They'll learn about our country, how to read, how to write, how to add, and subtract.  All of the things that you were slowly teaching, now they must sit at a desk and learn with all of the other children.  They are now big.

It feels like the worst sort of wrenching.  As if this life I birthed is being stolen away.  I do not like it, no, I do not like it one bit.

When I look at his face, I see my baby, I see the boy wonder in his eyes, I see his tender heart.  I want to protect all of those things that I have been nurturing since he came to this world.

Rather I have relinquished him to another.  Someone else is teaching him and tending him and demanding that he figure it out for himself.

Other children are either being kind or they are not.  There is nothing I can do.  I cannot run interference.  I have to let him learn about who he is, when mommy is not around.

I get to watch as he grows, but not all of the moments are spent with me.  He will enjoy accomplishing tasks, and I will hear of them from his daily recants or reports from his teacher.  Little things that I have so jealously guarded are now being recited to me.

I do have more freedom.  It's just my three year old and myself.  Yes, it is easier.  Yes, I can get more done.  But, there's this empty spot in our day.  I go back to find out what's taking Judah so long, only to remember he's at school.  When we cross the street I reach for his hand, but it isn't there.  He is sitting in  a classroom looking aptly at his teacher, memorizing colors and letters.  He's playing with new friends and running.  He's smelling new paper and freshly sharpened pencils and he is associating them with the newness of school, the crisp air of fall.

He is finding his way.  My sweet precious boy is growing up.

I jealously want to guard him from this.  I want to take him to Neverland.  I want him to brandish his sword and believe that he can fly.  I want him to laugh without thought.  I want him to be exactly who he is right now.

I want to freeze these moments.  They simply fly by, too fast.

My first born, my son, is in kindergarten.

I know that he needs this.  I know that this is right.  It simply aches to watch them grow.

I no longer care for the freedoms.  I would simply hold tight a little longer.