There’s No Place Like Home

It’s been such a long time since I’ve been able to really sit down and write, it feels good to be back again.  As an update, since you last heard from me, my husband and I moved from Chicago to Lawrence, KS.  Being separated from our families was so incredibly difficult for me – it still is!  But I’m happy to say that I’ve discovered that life goes on.  What a relief!  Still miss my family every day, and I am sad that I’ve missed out on watching my new little nephew experience his first year, but God has a way of presenting new and wonderful things to us and we just have to either ignore them or accept them.

Ignoring them is actually pretty easy.  It allows you to wallow in self pity – which, let’s be honest here, feels so good.  It lets us whine and pout and be lazy.  And it makes us expect special concessions be made, because after all, this is a hard time, right?  So, yeah, I did that for a while.  And then my husband started doing the thing that ended up irritating me the most.  He started bugging me to find a church.  The gall of that man!  Now I say this with humor because seriously, I must have a rock in my head for a brain.  Those of you who have read all my blogs about praying and interceding for my husband will understand this.  I’ve been asking God to transform my husband into the spiritual leader of our home.  I was so far buried in my own self pity that I couldn’t recognize the hand of God when it grabbed me by the britches.  Now, understand – I had definitely planned on being in church again.  I was just putting off meeting new people and not knowing anything about anything anywhere – basically I was still pouting about everything.  Eventually, though, I got off my behind and found a church with Jay.  It wasn’t the easiest experience at this new church and I learned probably one of the hardest lessons I’ve ever had to learn on my own.  (more about that in another blog once I can wrap my head around how to put it out there)  But there was such a liberation to embracing what God had laid before us as opposed to denying anything good could come of moving here.  I love that about Him.  I love that He is so painfully patient with us.  I can really be a dolt sometimes (ok a LOT of times) – and He just keeps on loving me and guiding me anyway.

So, here I am – a “Kansan” – or here in Lawrence we must refer to ourselves as a “Jayhawk”, because after all this is college town.  Home of Kansas University (really a beautiful campus), Mass St. (you’ll have to come visit to discover this gem) and it’s the only place I’ve ever been where you can walk out of a Chipotle being all corporately fed by “the man” and instantly be accosted by a new generation of hippies about songs of love and rainbows and being barefoot.  It’s so funny here sometimes.

And I love that I’m loving it here.  It feels good!  I didn’t love anything when I got here.  I was just barreling through, trying to impress my boss, battling the worst bout of migraines I’ve had in a while and just struggling to finally come up for air.  As a person who needs to be around my family this was a nightmare.  All of a sudden I regretted all the times I didn’t go visit my family when I had the opportunity.  You just begin taking things for granted until they aren’t there.  How common a problem this is, yet we all fall for it.  But like I said, life goes on.  This move transformed my marriage.  We went from arguing a lot to being great friends again.  When we told our friends and family about the move, several of them felt this would really be good for us.  I didn’t see how at the time, but I see it now.  We realized quickly that all we had was each other.  It made us face each other instead of running in opposite directions, and it grounded us more than we ever thought we’d be.

So, I’m grateful for my new home.  I’m grateful for the opportunities that we have together as husband and wife, and I’m grateful for growing up just a little bit more.