Fitting

I thought I'd share a quote from today's worship guide that moved me:

"Perhaps God's call to me is to live deeper, not farther down the road or closer to some destination 'out there.' Perhaps the journey for me is circular, always moving deeper and deeper into my own life and into the life of the world, finally discovering that in this place, on this holy ground, I am drawn deeper and deeper into God, whom I have been seeking all along."
Judith E. Smith, Weavings

Britt and I have discussed many times the problem of needing to find a place where I "fit." I have never really been in a place in life where I feel like I truly fit (at least until I found DaySpring, where everyone is encouraged to come as they are). In only a couple of years, we will be faced with the tough decision of where to settle after law school...where to plan on putting down roots, so to speak. I guess this quote really captured my attention even though I don't really think in terms of a grand journey or whatever. It told me that maybe I need to use this upcoming major life change to learn how to jump in with both feet and dig deeply into my life as it is while drawing deeper into God. And then maybe we won't have to work so hard to find a place where I "fit" because my satiety will come from within; I will be more comfortable in the depths of who I am and who God is, and it won't matter quite as much where we are.

Natural Refreshment

We had a wonderful day today visiting our Austin friends one last time before our big move. While we were eating lunch out on the veranda, I commented on how the hum of cicadas has always been the sweet sound of summer for me. They were singing for me very loudly today! Soon, there were some very large butterflies (Swallow Tails, I was told) casually fluttering by on their way to some nearby lantanas. That's not something I see every day, so it was a nice change of pace. The kids enjoyed swimming very much...and truth be told, so did we big kids! Britt mentioned how nice it felt to just sit in the sun for a while (slathered in sunscreen, of course); I agreed. The late afternoon brought about a drop in temperature which made it quite pleasant to sit outside and chat over homemade ice cream. Later, on our journey home from Austin, I succumed to my drowsiness. As soon as I awakened, Britt said Look at the rainbows! Sure enough there was a rainbow and its "echo" clear as day right outside my window. The further we drove, the more of the arch we could see until the full arch was visible with only a tiny bit of cloud interference. It was spectacular! The colors were so vivid! I called Ginger to tell her how I wished she could see it. We wished our Ava were big enough to enjoy its beauty too. A full rainbow is a rare spectacle. The clouds were particularly wonderful today as well, many colors and seeming textures represented. And as we rounded the corner to our last little stretch of highway, there was the huge, rich henna sun sinking into the horizon and oozing syrupy goodness all around it! A sight to behold! Though I was physically drained from our trip, my spirit felt a bit rejuvenated by all the fabulous little natural expressions of God's presence in our lives during such a hectic period when we don't take much time to look around.

Blechy Blogger

Self-imposed sleep deprivation, nightmares about fleas attacking me, my baby's new liking for an 8am wakeup time, company, and incessant packing and errand running have made me an inconsistent blogger. It's not like I have a following this early in the blogging game, so I am going to assume this is not frustrating anyone out there in cyberspace. Needless to say, I may continue to be inconsistent until "The Move" (as it is taking on a life of its own) is over. Something like 27 days...an uncomfortable several of which will be spent without access to my computer. Eek!

Time for bed. Need sleep!

I am a Texan.

I realized tonight (as I found myself telling a couple from Alaska that they should procreate before they move back to Alaska, just so their offspring would be privileged to be a Texan) that I am just about as proud to be a native Texan as I am to be an American. Texans are proud that way. As well we should be. Texas is like a whole other country, after all. We have rolling hills, mountains, plains, caverns, canyons, coasts. Texas is probably the only state that could be self-sustaining if it had to be. I will miss the Lone Star State. You must admit no other state flag even comes close to the Texas flag. NOT EVEN CLOSE. I will miss seeing the occasional HUGE Texas flag flying big as day against the backdrop of the clearest blue sky. I wish I had a picture of that to take with me. What other state flower makes quite as wonderful a setting for pictures of babies as the bluebonnet? Where else can you find pasta and tortilla chips in the shape of the state? Do other states have whole stores in their malls devoted to state-related merchandise? What other state's citizens fly the state flag almost as readily as the US flag? And how cool is it that Texas is the only state in the union allowed to fly its state flag at equal height to the US flag!? We are Texas. We are proud.

And even though we are Virginia-bound, and my daughter will not remember her Texas home, she will always be our little Texan.

I am 25-34

Some weeks after I retired to stay-at-home motherhood, I decided to join a couple different consumer opinion panels. One is even "Infant Division." I figured it would be something I could put on my resume for this SAHM phase of life so that it wouldn't look like I was doing absolutely nothing related to my degree field during this yet undetermined period of preferred unemployment. Anytime someone asks me what I got my degree in, the answer is "Family & Consumer Sciences...[brief pause during look of bewilderment]...Home Ec." (It's one of those fields that felt the need to have a more politically correct name some time back.) So, even though I am daily practicing most aspects of my degree field by doing what SAHMs and working moms alike do daily, I thought my participation in these consumer opinion things would be a nice addition to my very brief resume when it comes time to rejoin the workforce one day. Tonight I took a survey about wireless providers. When I got to the question that asked your age range, the pointer immediately gravitated to the 18-24 button. Oops! I'm 27. I caught myself and moved to the 25-34 button. That felt odd. And it shouldn't have felt odd, as I am three years into the range, for crying out loud! It's not like I just had my 25th birthday or anything. I find it very interesting that my mind seems to have done a lock-down at age 24. Why 24? There's not that much difference between 24 and 27. Why does 27 seem so different? Maybe it's not so much that 24 seems so different than 27, but that 18-24 seems so different than 25-34. And that IS different! There is SO much life change from 18-22 or so. But then somewhere around 23, 24, 25ish, life starts settling a little and you kind of coast for a few years. I guess I feel like I started coasting during my early 20s, and therefore my perceived age stopped at 24. There was something about turning 26 last year that seemed unusual. Having to admit you weren't exactly "mid-twenties" anymore, depending on how you look at it. I argued that we were mid-twenties as long as we were on either side of 25. But that logic confirms that I turned late-twenties this year. 27 is not adjacent to 25. I am 27 years old. I have a kid. I have a mortgage. I am moving my family across the country next month. I am 25-34. I wonder if when I am 32, I will realize that I started coasting in this age bracket at age 27...that it's happening right now. And then I will feel stuck at age 27. It will be interesting to see if that continually happens from age bracket to age bracket throughout life.

Flux, flux, and more flux

My life has been in flux for quite some time now. Last March, we learned that we would be parents. We were so excited! A wonderful little baby blessing was the focus of our every day from then on. Prenatal visits, mixed nuts in the cupboard for my middle of the night feedings, ignoring TV shows to watch the baby kick the nut can off my belly from within, etc. We were consumed with baby preparations. It was the most exciting time of my life! During the initial phase of this baby stuff, my DH was finishing his thesis, racing the clock each night to make the May graduation deadlines. He did it! We were so ready to be finished with studenthood for a while. The growing, VERY active baby inside me was quite a nice chance of pace. An office move/job change reared its ugly head in June. That put me under a lot of unwanted physical and emotional stress. In the midst of these life changes, I was in the process of slowly losing my grandmother, who had been my confidante and supporter through everything. I had been dealing with the pending loss of her for a long time, but you can never be fully prepared to lose the person who understands you better than anyone else in the world. She passed away in early August, and I was as ready as I could have been. Fat pregnant and grieving, I just tried to focus on the baby-induced joys, both present and future. My sister was pregnant too. Her beautiful baby girl was born September 12, at which time DH and I entered a two month phase of baby school. We were delighted to have the advantage of a "practice baby." Plus we were doing the requisite childbirth classes on the side. As if enough hadn't happened in six months, finally on November 5th, 2003, we entered the world of parenthood! Then, we survived eight weeks of living by the 24-hour clock. Watching TV at 3am felt as normal as at 3pm. Eating a meal at 12am felt as normal (albeit annoying) as at 12pm. Before we were solidly out of that phase, I went back to work. That was perhaps the hardest thing about having a baby. Pushing her out might have been physically exhausting (though not really painful, oddly enough), but taking her to my mom every morning while I headed off to a job I loathed was a thousand times harder by far. The drama of the coming weeks inspired us to let me "retire" to stay-at-home motherhood sooner than expected. At last I was able to fulfill my dream of being a home mom! After several months, I have finally begun settling into that role. And in the middle of this transition, we have been preparing for another transition back to studenthood. My DH will be starting law school at University of Virginia (very proud of him!) in the fall. So, a cross-country move, requiring that I leave my whole family and my life-long hometown, will top off the long list of life's little transitions for this year. My goodness! I am looking forward to the adventures ahead, to becoming a truly independent family unit just the 3 of us, to experiencing more obvious seasons(!)...so many things. We are currently in the moving phase. Next comes the settling in phase, followed by a probable homesickness phase. And before we know it, we will finally stop one day and realize that life has, at long last, settled into a reliable pattern of daily activities again. By then, we will have done our fair share of time living in a state of flux and will probably be all the wiser for it.