Life in the Spring


The fact that it's 10 AM on a Thursday and I'm still in my pajamas drinking my smoothie can only mean one thing: my kids are with someone else. I met Devin's mom yesterday and she took the boys for a couple days. Devin and I will go get them tomorrow and spend the weekend in FW so he can play a hockey tournament with his cousin. Devin and I had a couple events we needed a babysitter for, so it sounded nice to send the boys to Grandma's and she was gracious enough to say yes. From the reports we've gotten so far they are having a fabulous time. Ira didn't even cry when he saw me on FaceTime...that's a first.

I enjoy being in my house alone, because it's such a rare thing. However, whenever I'm going to bed and walk past my kid's empty bedrooms, I can feel a bit sad. It's a good reminder of the joy we experience having bedrooms filled with sweet little boys. I seriously love having boys. It's not that I wouldn't want to have a daughter ever, but somedays I just want a family full of boys because I think they're just so awesome. Though right now we're really happy with two boys and aren't feeling the need to put any plans in place for more (just in case you were suspicious about why I'm talking about future children).

Sometimes I can't believe how normal life has been over the past year. There are, of course, everyday frustrations with kids or finances or work, and difficult times (like sitting outside in the frigid middle of the night with poor Henrik who can barely breathe from croup), but overall life here has become fairly predictable and even kind of easy. Maybe the ease we've felt is due to coming out of a couple years that had been hard and honestly, kind of sucky. It's funny to me that we were married for over 4 years before we had a "normal" year.

When life is normal, we tend to spend a lot of time talking about what's next. You know, just to keep things interesting. And while our everyday life has looked really stable these past few months, there's been a LOT of discussion about the future. We've found ourselves in a nice spot, but not somewhere we can stay. Too many things about our life....our home, location, church...just don't quite fit who we are. I've been trying to make lists of things that make me feel alive, because while our current state of life is very happy and God has blessed us abundantly, there's an element of my spirit feeling regularly like something is missing.

At first glance, I can easily dismiss feelings of restlessness as discontentment or some sort of spiritual need. This is definitely the case at times, but when you have the same stirrings over and over I think it's good take note that maybe there's something in need of change. Last Fall Devin and I, separately but simultaneously, started having some of the same questions about our current life and the same dreams for our future. This could make me cry, because its one of the many ways that God has answered my prayer over and over again for Devin and I to be on the same page. Anyway, we started dreaming and discussing and from time-to-time we would explore avenues that seemed like they could accomplish what we desired. Each time we explored, it was a clear 'no'. Sometimes we pushed despite knowing it was a stretch, but God would mercifully shut it down. It was sometimes hard to take, but deep down I always knew it would work when the time was right.

We're once again in a time of exploring and I think I'm finally in a place where I can be really confident of how God leads us and know there's no point in me frantically trying to make something happen. What a relief. What a freeing thing to calmly walk down a path knowing that my part in it all is really so small.

I write this post mostly for the future. I want to be able to look back at this process because I've been through enough change over the past several years to know that it can be exciting at first, but then get really hard. So here's to whatever God has for us next, the good and the bad, knowing that thriving in this short life is worth having times that are not predictable or easy.

4 comments:

Linda said...

I enjoyed reading your "musings while sitting in a quiet house".
I'm glad you had this time to reflect and look forward to what may come next!
Glad to hear the two munchkins are doing well at Grandma's house :)

leah said...

excited to see what God has for you!

Daveana said...

Ditto Leah! I'm so excited to see what God has in store for your family!

T and M said...

I'm catching up on blogs tonight-love seeing how you and Devin are on the same page and the Lord is answering prayers