If it weren't for....fill in the blank

We arrived at Minot AFB in mid August, moved into a house, found a church that immediately felt like home, started school with the boys in mid Sept being supported by the local Classical Conversations community, lived a minimalist lifestyle fora couple months while waiting for our HHG to arrive from Turkey, spend 3 weeks in an unpacking/purging frenzy (mostly solo for me, as our delivery was last minute scheduled for a day/week in which Josh already had a full clinic booked), got a dog, finished organizing our garage right before the freezing weather hit and are now driving (as I type this) to Omaha to meet up with Josh’s side of the family and dear, precious friends from our time in Portugal, for the Thanksgiving week.  We moved to Minot, and now it’s Thanksgiving, and the in-between feels like a blur of re acclimating to being an American living in America - something I wasn’t ready for yet and still often don’t feel ready for.  I miss living overseas intensely, but am utterly grateful that the Lord directs our steps.  HIs timing is perfect and beautiful.  With that I have great peace.  

I am exhausted.  For weeks the house looked the way my brain felt.  Disorganized, messy and uninhabitable.  Moving has always been a challenge for me, as it is for everyone.  This one felt different than the others because of the circumstances surrounding the move.  Our Turkey season didn’t feel completed until our early possessions started being offloaded from the 15 crates that were trucked to our front door.  It was so exciting, but so profoundly sad all at the same time.  Not to mention overwhelming.  That first night after unpacking our kitchen and getting our pottery hutch position and ready for the unpacking of the pottery I stood leaning against the kitchen counter and cried a hard gut cry.  Josh wrapped his arms around me.  All I could muster up was, “here’s all the stuff.  Now where’s our people?!”  It didn’t feel right to be around all the stuff again without our tribe from Turkey.  The last time I was with this stuff I was with them.  There was no goodbye, there was no closure, there was no packing out process to help close that chapter in my heart and mind.  It was surreal and painful to see all the furniture again.  The memories that came with it, from all the places we’ve lived and all the precious friends we’ve shared time with around it swept over like a torrential downpour.  Closure came with that, in whatever form it could with such a strange scenario.  

Thank you, sweet Lord, for the seasons you’ve led us through - even the ones that have ended painful and abruptly.  Your sovereign grace sustains my weary heart.

Cherry’s owner dropped her off at our house just 5 days after our HHG was delivered.  We were far from being unpacked and in livable space when she arrived and there was no way for me to anticipate the frustration a 4 year old, well trained, calm black lab would insert into the situation.  Between bolting when the front door was opened to peeing in every bedroom and multiple times in the carpeted hallway I was beginning to think taking her was a mistake.  She’s transitioned since then and seems to be remembering her training, with a few accidents here and there.  She’s my shadow and, my oh my, has that been something to get used to.  The introverted part of me really dislikes being followed around, constantly, and she’s there every step of the way.  There’s two entrances to our kitchen and she will choose to stand in (she’s not allowed in the kitchen) whichever gives her a straight view of me.  She is a social lab, through and through.  She views herself as a full member of the family, it seems, and delights and expects attention any time idle hands are available.  Even when they aren’t.  Our attempts at decreasing her barrel size have been successful, but she’s still got a ways to go.  She has a waistline now, but one can still see the layer of fat shift back and forth as she walks through the house.  It’s quite humorous.  She’s a beefcake!  We are getting used to her (mostly) and she’s grown accustomed to her.  She’s becoming more enjoyable to have around and is learning our habits quickly, as well as the new rules we’ve been teaching her.  I’m so grateful that she’s kennel trained, as that gives us moments of reprieve on days when we simply cannot have her nosing everyone available (or unavailable) for attention.  

We are doing a small group at our Pastor’s house every other Sunday afternoon.  Those weekends are wonderful, but quite sapping, as we are gone those Sundays from 9-5 and then have CC the next morning for the boys.  It takes a good couple of days for my social skills to build back up those weeks.  Ha!  Our Pastor and his wife are hobby farmers (took over his dad’s farm when his dad passed away several years ago) and are very generous of their overflow of farm provisions.  We enjoy local honey they filter themselves from bees they rent during the summer months to pollinate the Canola they grow.  The honey is incredible!  They have many chickens (she just told me they’ve lost count! haha!) and their eggs are delicious!  It gives us fond memories of the chickens we had on the island and long for the day where we live somewhere again where we can have chickens.  The boys run to watch the chickens when we visit the farm - they are such hilarious and delightful animals to watch.  We purchased a quarter cow from them (just last weekend) that another family backed out on and are excited to start enjoying that delicious meat when we get home from our Thanksgiving vacation.

We’re renting an Air BnB with friends from the island.  We haven’t been all together as a group, us, Shelby and the Pechs, since the Pechs moved from the island in April of last year (2015).  It’s surreal for us all that we actually get to be in community together again for a few days!  OH how we delight in the beautiful friends the Lord has blessed us with throughout these years of Air Force life.  They were our family (and remain so) when we were all so far out of our biological family’s reach.  We get to see sweet nieces and their parents, our brother and sister, who we love so entirely and parents and other brothers and sisters.  So, we’re driving along a South Dakota interstate lined with snow drifts and ice to meet up with a share time with all these sweet, precious friends and family members and its incredible to me the way the Lord bends and shifts are lives when we least expect it.  Our time in Turkey wasn’t supposed to end until July 2017 and here we are DRIVING(with no 9 hour flights or layovers or rental vans!) to meet family for Thanksgiving for the first time in 7 years!  It’s.so.neat, even with the sting of having to leave our Turkey community to abruptly without closure.  it makes me so thankful for social media and technology - we don’t have to wonder how they are.  Communication happens in seconds and it’s salve for the heart.  

And now, our last few months in pictures