In-Between

I feel like I'm very much in an in-between place right now. And I am continually glad that we took these 6 weeks to be in-between.

Three weeks ago we moved away from the only home that Nathan and I have ever really known together. We packed up our (still unsold) house and drove away with everything we own. The packing was exciting. The purging was exciting. The cleaning was exciting. The loading was exciting. And the driving away was exciting...until I turned the first corner, not even a block from our house. And then I burst into tears! I cried, alone in our car, for a good 15 to 20 minutes...noticing the last time I would drive away from our house (it being our house), the last time I would leave our town (it being our town), the last time we would drive by our church (it being our church)...I guess I get emotional. Who knew? : ) There was suddenly so much that I was leaving behind.

This in-between time has been so good to continue to process what we have left behind. The first few days were full of lonliness for the people and life that we left. I felt completely unsettled and displaced, and there were many more tears over the next couple days. But, these last three weeks haven't been completely depressing and horrible. Far from! There has also been intense joy in these last three weeks. We have settled in our in-between place and are enjoying life without work. Life without a schedule. We've never had this much time off together and it makes me SO excited for retirement! haha...yeah, I know. It's been SO nice to have Nathan's parents' house to ourselves so we don't feel like we're visiting for 6 weeks but that we have a neutral place to process everything. I feel like being in-between has given me room to (physically and emotionally) leave behind our last home and (physically and emotionally) prepare for our next one. I feel just exhausted some days, but I know that this processing needs to happen. I don't want to just skim over this move without learning everything I can about where we came from (from the outside now) and how it shaped us in our four years there. I want to take the moving process slowly and draw every little piece of wisdom out of our experiences. Some days I just want to sleep and forget everything for a while, because it takes SO much energy to remember, but I also don't want to waste this time and forget where we've come from.

Three weeks from tomorrow, we will get in our car once again and begin our 30+ hour drive to our new home. When we first moved away from our last home, I could hardly think about what was next because there was so much to think about regarding the move. But now that I find myself at the halfway point between the old and the new, I am starting to get very excited about what's to come! We have found out that we are in apartment "J" (why does this make it feel more real?). We can actually see the "drive date" on the calendar now. Our VISA and health insurance and car insurance is all in the process of being ready for us to leave. IT IS STARTING TO FEEL REAL, PEOPLE!

This "reality" thing that I'm experiencing is exciting and scary at the same time. It is exciting for the obvious reasons. We are going to meet alot of new people. We are going to live in a new place. We are going to live in an on-campus setting again. We are going to drastically change our pace of life. What's not to be excited about? Well...I did mention that it's also scary. In so many changes come so many, many questions. The biggest question being "How will we pay for everything?" It's not cheap to quit your jobs, move to another country, and become a full time student. My way of dealing with not having an answer? I have not been able to look at the details of our financial "stuff" since we left our old town. This is SO unlike me! I am usually a budgeter...a financial planner. But when I know that there is money coming in each month to cover our expenses, it is a whole different ball game. There is something different about seeing what we have in our account and knowing what school will cost and noticing a large gap. What is there to look at when those numbers don't match up? And the gap between the two just grows larger each month as each mortgage payment comes out. Ack!

Last night I was praying, in desperation over our current finances and future financial well-being, and I felt like I was a child in swimming lessons again. I was being asked to put my face in the water and not try to understand how I was going to float (this just doesn't make sense to alot of kids!) but to just have faith that I would. In my prayer, I felt like I was floundering a little. Okay, I was floundering alot! Last night, I was the annoying kid to teach who would flail and splash and insist that it is impossible for a person to lay on top of clear, invisible water. I was pouring out my worries to God and I felt as helpless as a child who's being taught to swim with the lifeguard just standing by, making sure I'm not going to drown, but also not helping a whole lot. And I got the sense that God is teaching us (particularly me) faith. I guess I just need to lay back and relax and go with the flow if I expect to be able to live on nothing. But the lifeguard (God) IS there to keep us from drowning. Sure, he sometimes will help us by holding us up and then slowly letting go again, but you can't learn to swim if someone is always holding you. Sometimes you just have to flail and flounder and get the hang of it yourself. So I feel like I'm floundering in this whole faith thing. But I'm sure, after two years, I'll start getting the hang of it...

So that's our in-between spot. Halfway between here and there. It takes so much energy to think about (and therefore write about) anything related to moving, so I have been posting about crocheting and decorating and Lennox and anything other than what's going on. But I want to be real and I want to share, so that's where we are now. Our In-Between.