shifting.

We have loved the last almost-two-months at my parents’ house.  It’s been nothing short of delightful, in all the change and uncertainty we’re experiencing, to watch our kids spread out into a familiar space with their familiar bedroom and toys and stuffed animals and soak up special attention from Papa and Nina.  It’s been nothing short of delightful to take spontaneous ice cream trips, to sit on the porch and stare at the trees, to stay up way too late watching the Food Network, to rest.  We are thankful for the chance to be together.

And now, we are also thankful for the opportunity to move across town.  Some friends are overseas and offered their home to us for a month.  We moved in today and it’s wonderful . . . cozy and bright, spacious, clean.  I am getting healthy, and after the last several weeks of traveling and doctor’s visits, we are anxious to settle in and be a normal family for a bit.

David will get up in the mornings and go work in a coffee shop or have meetings, I will bustle in the house and plan our meals and play with the kiddos and catch up with friends.  We’ll be much closer to our church and will begin to have folks over for dinner and check out the Columbia farmer’s market on Saturday mornings.  I know it sounds strange, and maybe not really like “resting,” but my soul feels able to breathe again, resuming these seemingly mundane rhythms.

Tonight David and I cooked together in the kitchen and bathed the kids, and now I’m getting ready to curl up with a book.  It feels . . . so normal.

You know me by now.  Change isn’t my strongest suit.  I thrive on stability and routine and familiarity and being known.  The last two years (okay, maybe a few more than two) were about learning to give up those longings for the sake of following Jesus.  And oh, they’ve been hard.  Harder than I ever imagined.  And so very, very good.  They’ve changed me, in ways I need to be changed.

The future may, to some extent, be about the same thing.

But for now, for now I am very, very grateful.  I’m home.  I love my city.  I love my church.  I love my doctors and breathing fresh clean air and tying my running shoes because I have the energy to go for a jog.

It’s all a gift.