moving prep, savoring every day life, and scale removal
/Moving prep has been in full swing since we got back from our roadtrip on June 24th. I started immediately, knowing things would get crazy in the last couple of weeks because of our trip to Flathead Lake in Montana with Josh's family at the beginning of August. What an whirlwind summer. My goodness! While being tremendously busy with trying to prep, organize, repair and purge the house and our belongings, I've had to be very intentional about taking breaks to invest in the boys. They're individual ways of dealing with the stress of a move are already showing up, and it's astounding to me with each move how they tend to deal with it much the way they did, individually, during the last move. Sweet boys. They are worlds ahead of where I was at their age in resiliency. They keep asking me when we are getting to our Omaha house, and Luke continuously asks me why I'm putting things in boxes and painting walls back to white and disassembling the decorations we have around the house. There's just no adequate way to explain it to his little mind. Josh caught a flight at 7:30pm last night out of Minot and landed in Omaha at 11:30, was up again at 5:00 and drove to Denison to do a shift at the ER all for the sake of providing a paystub to our underwriting company to prove he has a job.....even though they have the contract. :/ That's been a frustrating process to walk through, as we were told it wasn't necessary, and then that changed two days before our original closing date (we didn't close, clearly). So, the new closing date is tentatively set for mired-August and we are hoping there are no more snags. He will have to provide paystubs from two more shifts that he'll work the week we get to Omaha - the arbitrary numbers they throw at us are confusing, but we'll do what they ask to avoid losing the house.
The Lord continues to be gracious and patient with my waffling and emotional heart and shows me his guiding hand in various ways throughout the days leading up to this move. Josh sat with me and listened to me weep and work through all the aching parts of my heart a couple days ago when I was feeling to utterly overwhelmed and sad about the next two months.
-We are moving for the third summer in a row, the 5th time in 4 years if we count the evacuation leaving me and the boys out of our own home for 5 months last summer.
-We are moving from a community that we love, so entirely
-We are separating from the military - the only life we've known for the past 7 years
-We are moving to a city specifically with the intent of starting our missions training - something that had to be on hold while in the military - that in itself is overwhelming on so many levels!
-The Lord is doing some serious, gentle, beautiful work on my heart - the running theme seems to be obedience in the call of suffering and missions. I've asked that he prepare me to be obedient to step into what he calls us to, regardless of the environment, and he's certainly begun to ever so gently and graciously break down the parts of my heart that want to run the other direction. He's working out areas of pride I didn't know existed in my heart - deep in there and as they work their way to the surface I can see the ways they've effected my view of others and who He has called me to be. I'm being humbled in areas I didn't think were necessary. It hurts, but it's so very necessary. I often think of Eustace in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, standing by the water as Aslan pulls the scaly layers from his dragon body - he pulls a layer, Eustace washes it off in the pool, and another layer is removed. The pool soothes the pain in between, and the removal hurts like nothing Eustace has experienced, but he knows it's necessary and it's intensely relieving.
At times I weep simply because of how gentle and gracious He is - so intensely powerful and sovereign, and so patient and gracious in the way that he is showing me His heart for the lost and giving me a longing to obey the Great Commission more intense than I had imagined I could have, but first there are scaly layers that must be removed.
Here's some pictures of our lives from this past week. Last night I went to the front door to lock it and noticed the sky was pink. I walked outside and witnessed some of the most beautiful clouds I've seen in my life thus far. I watched for a bit by myself and decided it was too beautiful for the three older boys, who were all just freshly put to bed and surely still awake, to not see! I ran and got them and we spent nearly and hour watching two separate sections of huge puffy clouds converge into one massive thunder storm that was slowly blowing to the East.
