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.

Introspective Mini-Funk

Who am I fooling? Here I had promised to be “real” with you, and then I find myself tippy-toeing around the issues I’m facing, tempted to sugarcoat them. Frankly I am feeling swamped. Too much to do, too little time….

Maybe some of you experience that this time of year. Thanksgiving is over, and the rest of the year flies in double time and ends before you’re ready. Particularly in December I become nostalgic and just want to scream at the clock to STOP, if not just slow down or even rewind a bit. At the very least I want time to stand still for an hour or so while I recover from the jet lag of zooming through seasons of life so fast.

Last week my baby turned twelve. That alone was enough to throw me into an introspective mini-funk. After 25 years of being a mother, I am beginning to see the end in sight. Just like the month of December, I know it’s going to speed by in fast motion. Meanwhile I am mourning the loss of four children who have grown up and moved on.

With so many serious crises in the world and people dying without knowing our Savior, it seems petty to complain when my life is so blessed, but that is the reality. It still hurts to face the holidays with only a partial family. I am thankful my two college kids will join us, but still, only seven of us around the table for Christmas dinner? That seems tragic somehow.

Now I understand how my own parents must have felt when I flew the coop for foreign lands. They never complained or made an issue of it, but mercy, this stinks! Back when I had four children under six years old, I used to laugh when those older missionary ladies would sigh and tell me, “Enjoy them, sweetie. They grow up so fast.” It made no sense back when my one goal was to teach them to tie their own shoes, but they were right.

Now that I have whiled away the morning whining over what can’t be changed, I really must get back to the “to do” list. The trouble with time speeding up all of a sudden is that I can’t find enough hours to properly prepare the Bible study in Spanish for Fridays. What was I thinking when I committed to do that?

Then there’s the progressive dinner for the MK teens I volunteered to help host, and the chime choir to direct for different Christmas programs, the short story I had hoped to submit for the WOTH Writer’s blog, and the prayer letter that needs to be written and sent before the end of the year. I expect some of you are in the same dilemma. Maybe you aren’t even reading this until weeks after it was posted. I understand.

IRL* Like it or not, December has begun, the fastest month of the year.
Another book suggestion for your Amazon wish list: A Lantern in Her Hand, by Bess Streeter Aldrich, my all-time favorite book. She “gets” the too-fast passage of time as well as the challenges of settling far from family and friends.