The biggest change these days is I am temporarily a stay-at-home wife and no longer at the daycare. My body and health didn't allow me to stay. I was taking a prescription pain reliever almost every night to calm my aches enough to sleep. It stopped working. I panicked and then realized I needed to stop working. Living off pain relievers is not a great longterm health plan.
Writing has not been my first instinct since moving. Largely, this is due to my natural tendency to wile the day away without any set plan. That old quote that an idle mind is the devil's playground is sometimes true. Not because I'm out thinking or doing anything shameful. Quite the opposite. My mind whirls with the enemy's lies, with anxiety and boredom. It's ironic. Here I am at home so much and yet I feel like I have less time to accomplish things than I did before. This brought about the realization that I wasn't effectively ordering my day. There is no reason to feel the victim. Grace when the day doesn't pan out, yes of course. But due diligence to set a daily routine has been beneficial, more than I thought it would be. Ann Voskamp's simple Grace Plan and Free Daily Planner have been worth more than the ten cents per sheet I paid to print them out. They have been like lifelines in my knitting: you may not need it today. But you still put one in because when you do need it, you will be grateful for it instead of ripping out 10 rows of lace and spending hours trying to figure out where you are.
Despite all the sunshine and warmth, here I plunge into icy waters. Moving 2300 miles across the country is not easy. Somehow, I thought it would be. When a dear friend who had moved internationally several times told me to call here when the culture shock became unbearable and caused me to cry while shopping for groceries, or because I couldn't take one more local oddity, I thought, "Me? Oh I'll be fine." Truth is, I did call her, multiple times. Denying how you feel isn't helpful. We can't force happiness.
But we can CHOOSE JOY.
We can CHOOSE GRATITUDE.
We can choose to trust Him and take all our hearts' burdens to our Lord.
Those icy waters sting, no matter how bright the sun is shining. Thankfully, Jesus rescues us from the sea and holds us close. I wrote a friend this the other day.
....moving to Florida has been a struggle and some days I don't feel like being happy and grateful. That sounds terrible doesn't it? I don't want to be a fake, of course. And honestly, everything here isn't awful. We have had some mighty challenges with our house, necessitating renovating most of the outbuildings and interior. It's costly and frustrating. ...That aside, things are good here. I keep working on my gratitude list, enjoying the tropical flowers and new culture. I am baking some, knitting some. Some days I am very much at rest, and some days I feel overwhelmed and just so uncertain about everything. When you leave a place you are familiar with it challenges you in new, unanticipated ways. It is good, but hard. I am reminded to take it slow, pray, and just go one day at a time, not overthinking, overreacting. Calm. Rest. It is okay. God has us. This is a beautiful, grand adventure for Eric and I together. I'm grateful we are so far from family and friends. We have each other, nothing and no one else.
Moving has been the part of the adventure I overlooked. It has been its own challenge. But God is using the discomfort to continue shaping me into His Son, and teaching me to depend more on Him. There are old areas He is at work in me, there are new things He is doing in this chapter. It's been a hard start, but the chapter isn't over. I think what's sometimes so difficult is the fear that if I start living in this new place, I'll somehow forget the old. How can that be? He has done so much good throughout my whole life, and even more it seemed the past four years that, it only shows His constant love and faithfulness for me. His love isn't just for the past. It is here for the present and the future.
To lighten this and make it more spring-life: we may miss snow but thus far, we haven't missed shoveling it. The songbirds are all migrating north, and as they fly by they are singing beautiful songs. The plumeria trees are in bloom and smell divine. I'm knitting a little surprise project. (No, it is not a baby bootie.) Eric now has a bicycle and is very excited to begin commuting to work on it. A laundromat opened up in town! It means no more two hour commutes or using friends machines. We are beginning to make some wonderful news friends and it puts a skip in my step :)
