"There'll be peace when you are done." – Kansas

Long time, no see, friends.  So much has happened.  I just couldn't write about in the middle though.  

I have shared before my firm belief that labor is a life skill, one you revisit over and over through other challenges.  It became something of an analogy for me and Lamaze breathing has been used way more when NOT in labor over the years.  

In Bradley childbirth they talk about the emotional signposts of labor. I swear this international move mirrored those stages eerily closely.  There is that initial rush of excitement, looking at homes online, thinking of the future, planning and organizing.  You start out pretty sure it can be done. Even as the going gets more challenging you get breaks and feel fairly on top of it all. 

Later, as the challenges begin to come closer together, leaving just the briefest moments to catch your breath, the enormity of the project hits with full force. At times you just have to hang on and ride it out.  Typically this emotional signpost is silence and a turning inward while focusing on the hard work at hand.  

That definitely happened.

At some point I just knew where we were with it all, where "I" was anyway, and that it was going to take quiet concentration to get through.  Moreso, I knew that some of what goes through your mind isn't true.  It takes a lot of determined effort to counter those little underminers with the truth that God is good, you can do it, and all things are working for good. It works best for me if I just don't utter the yuck and give it a chance to build.  So most nights I followed the time-tested advise of an early homeschool mentor who reminded a very young me that everything looks better in the morning and never to listen too hard to yourself at midnight.  Instead of writing, I fell into bed, shut off my brain, and started in again with each new day's work.  It was enough.  It was really all that could be done. By me anyway. 

And here we are now, in the mountains of Utah. It's been fifteen years since we left this place. It was a difficult assignment back in the day and I would be lying if I didn't say it played with my head a little heading back.  It took some conscious reminding that moving 'back' to a place can still be a moving forward in life. It has taken some reminding that our life has and can and will once more fit nicely into a very different mold. 

We have done a great deal of praying and talking and conceptualizing how life will look in this chapter.  Suffice it to say, quite different once again. And quite the same.  One perk of these tremendous upheavals and opportunities is you learn to identify what in your life is constant and what is variable.  What is at the core and what is changeable.  What matters and what does not. Also, that you can a great deal more than you give yourself credit for. 

One thing that I have missed is spending time in this space and telling our stories.  We have carved out a little corner for me in this temporary house we have leased while we house hunt.  Tonight is my first time alone here in the quiet sharing. Hopefully we can make this a date. : ) 

(shared with creative commons permission)

"The watch is…beautiful, but the trouble is it’s been in that box too long—it’s stopped working. Sometimes, you’ve got to shake it up again to get it moving. Too many opportunities out there to spend your life in a box, no matter how nice that box is."

– Dolphin Tale

 I wandered in to the kids' movie the other day as the older gentleman was explaining his going away gift (an heirloom watch which required a good shake to get started) to the young man who was so very apprehensive about the whole "going away" thing.  I am not young anymore and have done a good deal of going away myself.  And going towards and going forward.  

It doesn't get easier. 

We have had some wonderful and wrenching goodbye's.  We have had some sleepless nights wondering what we are going towards.  I have shared before the moments of fear over the not knowing.  When I wandered in during this clip, however cheesy, it did remind me about boxes, however nicely I may make them up.  They still contain and confine. They aren't meant to hold in a life.  Staying inside lends a certain dependability, predictability to life.  And it eliminates all new possibilities. 

The shaking up part can be a little disconcerting. Or a lot. Still, there are too many opportunities waiting to be embraced and only one way to reach them. 

I remind myself again that it is ok to be afraid, it just isn't ok to let that stop you.

"The spirit and practice of simplicity in dress, in food, and in furniture, the practical and continual self-denial which we have laid down as the very soul of womanly virtue – as indeed they are the soul of Christian life – must be made the groundwork of the education you give (your children). It will be for them as it must have been for yourselves, health of body as well as health of soul; it will be for the men and women of whom God destines them to be the (parent), the principle of strength of limb and energy of will, of clearness of intellect and purity of life; these are the the men and women for which America and the whole of Christendom are yearning and praying."

– Msgr. Bernard O'Reilly (likeminded readers, you want this book!)

It is a good thing, now and then, to articulate your vision to yourself, particularly when your life journey takes you along a road riddled with potholes.  (as it often does)  It seems to never fail that I when hit a bumpy stretch something falls open in my lap and does that for me, as this passage did in my morning meditation.  

There is the child balking at chores or studies, the unexpected diagnoses, the failed inspections, the appointments than run longer than planned, the disappointments that strike deeply in the heart, to the boiler that breaks down at odd hours.  It isn't usually the one big thing we struggle with, but the hundred smaller things that peck away at our resolve. (you know – that whole 'being pecked to death by baby chickens' thing) And sometimes both big and smaller challenges stack up together. 

We have had such a month. 

It reinforces to us the need for good healthy margins, given how quickly those fill up. It also reinforces to us the need to cultivate those four core virtues in ourselves and our children:

strength of limb

energy of will

clearness of intellect

purity of life

Coincidentally I had just read similar exhortations here.  

"You get to choose: either the Pain of Discipline or the Pain ofDisappointment. Nothing happens without discipline. No music gets played without discipline. No games get won. No finish lines get crossed. No freedom gets tasted. And you want that."

These are the conversations we have had with our kids, with ourselves. So we press on to:

clean up that thing,
study for that thing,
sweat on that thing,
or do that big thing that feels like an impossible thing —
You can bravely do the next thing, because God’s got this thing.

 While we are more than what we DO, we are still nonetheless given important things to do. We do those better when we lean into them versus slinking back. That's the theme right now, leaning into the curve. 

It's a story, short but sweet.  Truly both.   I was talking to a mom a couple weeks ago about my tendency to strike up conversations with strangers and to become engrossed in their stories.  At a Christmas party a year ago that happened.  There was a man who had the same condition as our son and had played wheelchair basketball.  As we talked about all that he shared how he grew up in Africa but as a young adult his host nation had a revolution.  Europeans were deported back to their countries of origin and for his family that was Portugal although it had been generations since they lived there.  

We had just been to Portugal and I was saying how taken I was with the local tile art and so sad I couldn't bring any back.  We had only carry on suitcases however on that trip.  

This is where the story gets really wonderful. : ) 

So as I was encouraging this younger mom to take time to listen even to perhaps eccentric, chatty people my husband mentions that this young man messaged him.  Turns out he had come back from a visit to Portugal and lugged this set of tiles back with him for me. 

Moral of the story, no bit of warmth you send out into world and no bit of investing you do in other people is forgotten. Everyone has a story. The tiles will forever remind of his.

Invest.  Listen.  Care.  It matters and it is noticed. 

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."

TS Eliot

Here's to beginning again.  May your new year be blessed. 

Celebrations in London tonight here.  Our last European New Year's. 

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.

~Norman Vincent Peale