It's cold and dark this morning. 38 degrees, which is warmer than it has been, but dark so it feels like its 5am, when really it's already 7:30. Later mornings are less productive for me but I enjoy the quiet before the chaos so much that I sneak around the house to not let anyone wake up for as long as they'll let me. Quietly drinking coffee by my little space heater that looks like a fireplace, snuggled under a warm blanket, the dog sleeping at my feet. It reminds me of when I was a little girl and I'd wake up early to find my mom or dad doing the same. It was my favorite time to snuggle up and lay quietly while they finished their coffee and reading time. I find that these days, there are so many memories of my childhood that pop up, I wonder if it's because I am recreating all those memories for my children and I'm now the same age my mom was, so my recollection of this part of my childhood is so clear. Raising 2 more children than my parents and all very close in age, makes my job very different than my mothers. I have 2 brothers and we're all 6 years apart, her time with us was more spread out and she was able to really dive into the individual needs of each of us. I hope in doing life so differently I'm also able to dive into each one of my children the way she did. I already know that in many ways, I'm spread much thinner. But I do my best and hopefully, like me at 38 (almost 39), they will be looking back on how hard I tried and appreciate me even in my failures. Just this morning after a terrible night's sleep, I woke up to start my day ready for the challenges I might face. This world is spinning quickly and my children are quickly growing into taller people with opinions and dreams of their own. I'm having these moments where I se myself with my heels dug in, pulling at their shirt tails. And then other moments when I'm so thankful I can just tell them to go take a shower and go to bed and I can sit on the couch an watch them follow through with the directions I've given them and not have to get up once to help them. There's a sense of satisfaction in the ability to sit back and watch the beauty of what we've taught come to fruition in our children. Even in the small ways it feels like accomplishment...and as a stay at home mom, accomplishment is as fleeting as thinking you've ever got caught up on the laundry.
I'm reading a book called Simply Tuesday by Emily Freeman and I've joined this group called Wild and Free. They are both designed around a simpler living, a retrograded lifestyle and slightly antiquated in comparison to the fast moving pace of society. This entire year and half since losing my dad has prompted this slower pace. I've always been drawn to a pioneer adventurer lifestyle, creating life where you can live off the land and find adventure in the wilderness. I was raised this way and still crave the freedom I feel when faced with wide open spaces. City living was always a temporary life for me, I found a place there and loved the elements of social business and simple conveniences, but my heart always new that open patches of dirt and rarely traveled paths were waiting for me. And now, after 6 years of wandering in my own dessert of unknowns I feel like I'm home. In a rural setting I know how to live, I know how to fill my time, I know how to homeschool. I have the resources to do the things I know. I was such a country mouse as a child and my dad was such a homebody, before I was 15 I didn't know how to use a city cross walk. I'd ridden my horse all day and crossed miles of ground, and could probably survive in the Arizona dessert for a couple of days, but don't send to me ride a city bus. I've still never done it. So here I am back to where I feel I belong. It looks different than what I thought, but God's plans always seem to differ from mine. (thankfully) The move has settled me, slowed my manic-grief, paced my busy nature and given me a place to make my own.
Living in transition is a hard place to settle in, since our move from New River 6 years ago, was hard. The place we called home was never our own. We rented in North Carolina, we moved after only 6 months, we lived with my parents, we rented my brother's home for five years. It sounds like a disaster, doesn't it? It could have been, but it wasn't. God found me there too. Kicking and screaming, he found me. He had to take some things first, our comfortable little ranch, our money, our extended family, my husband's anger and frustration and then our religion and the HE gave us Himself. It was the most beautifully painful transition I've ever known. And in it He gave us, our fifth child, a beautiful baby girl, 6 months living on the beaches of North Carolina with some of our best friends, 6 months of sweet time with my parents, time I will always cherish with my dad. A home on the corner of a busy city street where just 5 to 10 minutes away lived every home schooling family I could ever love and want to spend 5 years growing our children with. See, God didn't answer my prayers the way I wanted. He did better. I just kicked and screamed and cried about it a lot. Because I was too small to see the big picture.
In my smallness, I found out God is who he says He is, not who I said He was.
I found out God is who He says He is, not what other people say He is.
I found out God loves me.
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