Expectations

It's been one year since Grace and I left Modesto and headed east toward our new life - our new reality. So much has happened. So much has changed. So much has not exactly turned out the way we expected it to.

Now here I sit wondering how everything that seemed so sure is now crumbling beneath me. I have tried so hard to remain faithful. I have tried so hard to have a Christmas spirit - an Advent heart. Yet I go through the motions each day with a fake smile plastered on my face hoping I can keep it together another 24 hours. I just want to sleep through the whole thing at this point.

What do you do when you stop believing in the magic? How does one regain the childlike wonder and awe when reality keeps creeping in? I guess you just have to continue to fake it 'til you make it as they say.

Ah well... I'm praying that 2009 will be better. I'm praying that obligations and commitments will be honored. I'm praying that everyone who is hurting will find peace. I'm praying - at least I'm trying to.

So here's to 2009. Here's to survival.

Listening to the rain...

There is something quite soothing about rain. Oh, I know... I grumble and complain about rain at times. But, on a night like this when it's late and most of the world is asleep, rain can take me back to slow summer nights of my childhood when nothing was as important as catching fireflies and eating watermelon - seeds and all. I like being inside my home on a rainy night, warm and dry and safe - listening to the staccato of droplets outside my window. I just wish those I love most were here, too.

Updates on life...

Good grief... has it really been nearly 2 months since I last wrote on this space? Time flies when you move across the country, I guess. New job, new church, new community - so much to learn.

Although I still feel like the move was absolutely the right thing to do and divinely led, it has been an adjustment - and not always pleasant. I knew I'd miss being away from my kids, my routines and life-in-general, but who knew how much I'd miss Queen Bean (or at least the availability of Starbucks on every corner) and Target!?! That's pretty sad, really. There are some positive replacements, tho' and I really do enjoy coming home each evening. Especially on a day like today - warm, slightly humid - quiet.

I've even been cooking dinner at least two nights per week! Wow - who the heck am I?

Ok... so nothing more existential than that tonight. I guess I should be more profound - just can't seem to think of anything that I'm burning to post. I suppose I'm just content to sit here, rocking on my metephoric front porch and watch the world go by.

Catch you later!

And so it begins...

The movers come today, dropping off the shipping cubes that will eventually contain my entire existence in this place: the accumulated memories and material goods that we have gathered in over the past 12 years, 9 months and 5 days. It amazing to me just how relative time really is. I swear that just yesterday it was Thanksgiving. How did 3 weeks pass without me noticing? Oh, that's right - I've been packing!

But God is in the details! All of the loose ends have been neatly tied in a bow. All that is left is the leaving. And that will come even more quickly!

So - this is my last post from California. By the time I come back to this space, I will be in my new home overlooking a lake. I will be surrounded by my family - both my birth/marriage family and the folks in our new church home. And although, over time details of this place may fade - the people I am holding dearly in my heart never will. I hope we have left a memory of us here, too.

Shalom and Merry Christmas!

Expectations

'tis the season of Advent. Each year nearly everyone who breathes celebrates this time of anticipation whether they know it or not. Pregnant women certainly understand the combination of excitement and fear that leads up to the final moments before birth. Little children can hardly contain themselves and enter into a game of hide 'n' seek with the packages they see mommy bring home. Of course, some children wonder if there will be anything at all this year. School children wait for the "winter holiday" to come and we all wish for a White Christmas - amazingly even those who live in places where it never snows at all!

This year "advent" seems a bit more, hmmmm, real. I am the one waiting for the launch of a new journey - a new life. It's not an abstract concept. Oh, I've been following and preparing and listening for some time now but the actual process of putting one foot in front of the other and knowing that I will never return to this life again is filled with excitement, fear, a little dread, great joy, anxiety... you name it, I'm feeling it.

With a deep sigh, a look of determination on my face, and a quick squaring of my shoulders, I rise this day in full anticipation of what it to come. I am daunted by the work left to do in order launch, but I am in "countdown mode" now - there is no turning back. I accept and allow this journey to unfold in all of its mystery.

So be it!

Storm after the calm

I am confused. Dazed, stunned, overwhelmed and confused. As I said to someone recently, "I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop [with regards to all of the marvelously synchronous way this move has come about] but I never expected the entire inventory of Payless to come crashing down on my head!"

My car needed some minor repairs. I have discovered "minor" is relative to the make/model and availability of service. I did earn enough in our yard sale to cover three of the four repairs. The more major job of fixing my heater fan [a bit of an incovenience when you're driving cross-country in DECEMBER!] was another matter. Unfortunately, the day I had to take my car back to Pleasanton [beware owning a specialty car... service is rarely local unless you live in a major metro area!] was the day was had to say goodbye to our faithful and loving Lab, Abby.

Then, our son has been fighting with banks and other financial junk for a while but this week it seemed to be more conflicted, more inanely stupid [on the bank's part] and a real challenge for me to allow him to figure it all out. He did. And he's ok with the results for now.

Grace came down with the flu. And she found out she didn't pass all of the proficiency exam so that she can move in January with a diploma. I guess we're back to square one on that front.

Then Larry's 93 year old grandmother is taken to the hospital. She had not been well for a week and prescribed treatment was doing nothing. Larry's mother expressed her fear more than once that if Granny went into the hospital, she doubted that she'd ever come home. Granny died yesterday. Peacefully. She was so tired and kept asking to "just go home." We all knew what she meant. It is so very sad - it's sad that the kids and I are, once again, stuck on another side of the world from family.

Oh, yeah... yesterday my car decided to die in the middle of the grocery store parking lot. So once again the car has been towed an hour a way and I'm holding my breath waiting for the prognosis. Can you DNR a car? Oh, and did I mention all the doomsday advice I've been getting about the house and the current downturn of the real estate market??

And yet, despite all that I can whine about I still feel strangely calm. Sad. Done. Exhausted. Yet I refuse to be shaken. I refuse to curse God. If this is a test I'm struggling with the answers and I don't know if I'll pass, but, dammit, I refuse to give up. I know in my heart, as surely as I sit here and feel the keyboard under my fingers, that this road is the one we're meant to travel. Kyrie Eleison.

There will be a rainbow. There is always a rainbow. I count on the promise of the rainbow!

Requiem

We said goodbye today to a dear and loving soul. Rest in peace my precious Abby. Rest in Peace.