The In-Between

One of my most memorable prayer letters started out with the shocking announcement that Jim and I were splitting up and leaving the children at the orphanage.  The truth is that while I was going to Canada for a son’s graduation, Jim was making a trip to South America, and a friend in Mexico was keeping the youngest kids for a few nights in the children’s home where she worked.

This summer is sort of like that.  The family is split up and all over the place.  I’m getting a small preview of the empty nest, which has its benefits to be sure, but it feels so unnatural.  The girls have been visiting their niece and older siblings for a few weeks, and Jonny, our youngest son, has been working with an older brother in another state.  We are all over the place geographically.

Meanwhile I am spending four consecutive weekends in four different states during this whirlwind summer tour – slash- “home assignment.”  Jim and I welcome the simplicity of traveling together, just the two of us, but it still just feels odd.  When I think of it, nothing feels right any more.

Next week is our designated time to have all the kids “home” again, although we aren’t really going to be home, but in at our temporary home base in Ohio.  Even having all our adult kids back together isn’t exactly natural.  I trust it will be wonderfully fun, but it’s just not the norm any more.

After that I will be in Dallas for a long weekend visiting with my mom and siblings in the house where we grow up.  We can’t wait to be together again like old times, but nothing about it will seem normal either.

A side of me just wants to fast forward and be home, at my own house in Mexico, looking at photos of the summer, sorting it all out in quiet devotional times.  Right now I am getting weary of too much food, too little exercise, too many thoughts and too little solitude.  Summer trips to the U.S. are like that. 

My heart cries out for normal, but as my international friends keep reminding me, “Normal is just a setting on the dryer, and most of us don’t even have a dryer.”  There is no such thing as normal.  Not until much, much later.

What I am experiencing this summer is sort of the in-between phase between big family and empty nest.  What I am living here on earth is this unnatural in-between thing between earth and heaven.  I feel it strongly.  My heart yearns for a normal that doesn’t exist outside of heaven.  For now I only get glimpses every now and then.

Scripture says that all nations will hear the good news, “… and then finally the end will come.”  I’m clinging to that truth.  That’s what keeps me going when the kids are scattered all over the globe and home doesn’t feel like home any more.  That’s what gives me strength to be so far away from my precious grandbaby and aging mom and dmil.

Like you, I desperately long for the end to come, but at the same time, I want our loved ones overseas to hear the good news before He returns.  Until then, I keep striving ahead, muddling through the unnatural junctures of life, and embracing the reality that I am doing something worthwhile.

One lie saying I keep hearing this summer is “It’s all good.”  It’s not true yet, but it will be someday.  No one can convince me that “it’s all good” to be so far away from so many loved ones.

IRL*My diet this summer is like my life, it’s not all good, and it’s not all normal or natural, but it’s all for a good purpose.