Wow. I can never seem to be consistent at anything huh?! LOL. Hey LIFE HAPPENS. And this life has HAPPENED - wow. I can't believe its been almost two years since I've posted. Ironically my pageviews were impressively high.
SOOOOO - A new year. A fresh sheet of paper in front of us ladies and gentleman. What do you plan to write on it? These are the days we start verbalizing our aspirations, goals, and intentions for the next 12 months. Where do we want to go before this time next year? To know where we're going we have to know where we've come from and where we are right now. So here are my personal assessments.
Shortly after my last actual posting, (I had lots of drafts!), we lost a very dear friend. We knew she was passing, and had traveled to see her while under hospice care, and said goodbye. Those were precious moments.
The trip was exhausting, unusually so. I was too worn out to even stay for the funeral. And I learned on the return trip, while dodging tornadoes - literally, that we were expecting our fifth child. And things only snowballed from there! Weeks later we would lose my husband's precious mother to early onset Alzheimer's. Multiple family events escalated, but I'll keep it brief. Within a few more months we would birth a baby, graduate my husband from tech school, and move three states north in the dead of winter. Three major life events that all occurred in less than six weeks time. The move itself happened in 4 days, while I nursed a 6 week old baby.
Now, nearly a year later, we've started to settle into life up here. We're getting plugged in to community, congregation, and our family relationships again. We've moved 'back home.' Its good. I wondered if it would be. I wondered if we'd be able to reassimilate as well as we have, or if we'd struggle after 15 years' absence. The landmarks have changed, the roads look different, some of my former classmates look older (not me though!) and I struggled to find my way around at first. But its good. Its good to know that we're here, and probably always will be. I hope we get to complete the adventure of raising our kids here, and of welcoming grandchildren here. Maybe even great grandchildren. We certainly don't feel like we've arrived, just more like back to our roots. Still looking for better work. Still hoping to buy that house that will hopefully be our last one.
Maybe it will happen this year. Maybe not. But I do hope to add family devotions to our daily routine. Might not happen everyday, but we'd like to start. We already study it academically in our home school, but we want to have a discussion time around the meal table.
I'm also hoping to be of some use. Not just to my own family, although that is my first priority. But I hope to bless other families, other moms. I hope to minister in my own messi way. I have been contacted by other moms who in their own messi way are looking for answers to questions about their faith. We want to follow our Messiah - that's the messi part. We're in the trenches with our kids in the mess of life, trying to lead them to the feet of Messiah, and still keep up on the dishes and the laundry. We want to love our Messiah, the way he told us to and we want to do it on the calendar he set up in the biblical holidays. We might even try to learn Hebrew - the language of the scriptures, and possibly even heaven itself. And hopefully at the end of it all, be blessed to have happy, well-rounded, educated children who grow into adults who are rooted deeply in Messiah and scripture.
So tell me your lofty goals, those things you're striving for. Maybe we'll see each other along the journey this year. I look forward to catching up with you!c
