It has been just a little over a month since we left the sunshine state. Let’s chat about the weather. Yeah, it’s cold and that’s cool with me. It’s been fun experiencing something new. Coming out to the car and finding your diet coke from yesterday frozen. Ruining packages of baby wipes because they froze. Putting on lipstick that is straight from a -30 degree car, oh and face powder. Waiting for snow to fall. Forgetting your jacket. Wondering if you should leave that jacket in the car and run in the store so you don’t have to carry the jacket once you are inside. Figuring out boots are not just cute, they are practical too. Using lotion multiple times a day. Realizing that if I left a bag of groceries in the car overnight, it isn’t a big deal. Weather is quite the topic these days, but it is not the differences of winter or summer or fall that will be challenging for me. Spring will be the hardest change. I do not love lightening, thunder, hail, or tornadoes. Call me crazy.
My family is not usually sick, but this year we are on round two just this month. With six in our family if each one gets sick one at a time, that is a lot of days of sick in a row. Now, double that. We have had someone one not feeling great since Christmas afternoon when we lit the candles to sing to Jesus and Greyson threw up down my back. Merry Christmas.
We have had ups and downs since moving, as expected. The other night in a particular down, all of a sudden one child begins throwing up. This child is fabulous, but not a champion thrower upper. Let’s just say she remained in her bed the whole incident. Shawn and I have a strict agreement with sickness that I take top end and he takes the bottom. So, I’m up. I stripped the sheets and put them in a ball in the tub while I tend to my patient. I ask Shawn if he has seen a hose outside of the house we are staying in. He says yes and so I throw the pile of blankets outside. Intending to rinse them with a hose before putting them in the washing machine.
So you know the straw right? The one that did back injuries to that one camel???? I go outside to hose off the blankets and I see no hose connected to water. I question the man God gave me about it and He said, “well I saw a hose? I didn’t know you wanted it working”. Because clearly at midnight I want a non working hose. Maybe to gaze upon its beauty in the freezing temps? Look at it lovingly while sipping hot cocoa? Of course I wanted it working. So by the time we finish our ridiculous argument over the situation, I head outside to retrieve the blankets and now they are frozen. Let me remind you the reason they were out there in the first place. That is frozen too.
I will spare you the rest of the story…but let’s just say that standing there at that sink in the middle of the night cleaning the blankets by hand I had a low point. The point where you question all that is well and not well in the world and cry and just want to go home. Where you question how you ended up in Missouri cleaning frozen barf in the middle of the night.
“Behold His glory- and your raging heart will be held” -Ann Voskamp
There was time recently where life was really hard. I posted on Facebook “one foot in front of the other, that’s about all I’ve got right now.” A response came in…”a lot of great things were accomplished that way”. What a life changing time those days were. They taught me that no matter what was up in the day to day, you just have to do your best. That is when fantastic is born. Right there at midnight with chunks of frozen barf.
We have been welcomed here like no other, no joke. It is so awesome. We have been treated to meals, taken on city tours, checked on, loved on, given gifts, gift cards, and even had our juice poured in sugar rimmed chilled glasses {which I highly recommend}….and as I sat in church one Sunday morning, I cried. Tears of joy because we are home. It takes time to acclimate, but that will happen. I know in my heart that Jesus has us here and as difficult as some of this transition has been, it’s ok.
…and as most arguments are, in fact, a waste of time. It was recently brought to my attention that even if there had been a “working hose” the temps were below zero. It wouldn’t have provided me running water anyway.
Go figure.