A long couple weeks

My posts have been slow at best. Life has been moving at lightning speed, and full to overflowing. Honestly, the "fullness" hasn't been what's been hard; what's been hard have been the "overflowing" emotions.

Hurricane (aka Tropical Storm) Irene hit the state hard. While she failed to bring the anticipated rain to our particular region, she deluged the state as a whole, and emotionally I have struggled with the suffering felt by my fellow Vermonters. Many I know suffered job dislocation due to flooding, or business impact (destroyed workplace etc). Our infrastructure has been impacted, and it's affected much both directly and indirectly. It will take years to recover. While I know God is good and sovereign, I have had to work through my place in all this - how to process it, how to respond, etc.

School began, a busyness in and of itself, and there's always a lot of adjusting to do, between managing Patience's diabetes and setting everything in place for her at school, establishing everyone's basic routines, scheduling activities, a lot of "start-up" meetings to get the school year going. Multiply that by four. Deal with character issues as they arise. And fatigue. And growing - and seasonal changes - and thus clothes.... Always clothes to deal with, be it too small, too big, too cold, too hot, or too dirty. And the garden and groceries and so on and so forth...

And then the activities themselves: soccer, music lessons and practices, church activities...

And retreats, doctors appointments, ministry involvements, PTO involvement and so on and so forth.

And weddings (3 in 4 weeks - one down, two to go!)

And my host mother's death.

And the emotions. I'm tired. I'm concerned. I'm not "settling in" as quickly this year as prior years. I'm torn in my priorities. I'm wondering where God wants to use me. I'm happy. I'm sad. I'm grieving. I'm rejoicing. I'm busy. There are things that must be done. There are people who need me NOW. There are people who need me - and I can't keep putting them off. And the stuff must get done. Etc. For moments, things are clear, and then not so clear again. And then something will happen (like the vacuum breaking - still don't know where that's at and the house is not cleaning itself in the mean time) and the emotions will overflow. I'm going to need lots of tissues at this upcoming wedding because the joy and happiness will make me remember my host mom coming to my wedding which will remind me that she's dead and I'll cry again. I came close to crying cutting bread last night at dinner, because it was she who taught me how to properly slice bread for a meal ( THICK so you can taste it!). It's amazing how my emotions run in waves and have done so all month.

It's been a good month, really, somehow. But God is keeping me on my toes, depending on him. And if this is the new normal (this busyness), it's going to take me a while to adjust it would seem. But I am managing, day by day, to do what needs to be done. And somehow, I am not leaving a complete disaster (emotionally and relationally) in my wake. This is good, and this is progress. I am glad for that evidence that He is working in my life over the days weeks and years.

That's why I haven't written much. You see, between sprained ankles, falls on the ice skating, dodging the rain while attempting to clean out the garden by this weekend, earthquakes, hurricanes, meetings that last 3x the planned length, phone calls overseas, and bobbing and weaving a 1000 more things that I didn't expect, words have just not been there.

But they will come. This is a step, again, towards "speaking". And it's definitely a bit "eclectic".

I know the primary readers of this are family members, most of whom we'll see in just a few days at a very exciting and much-anticipated event. Between now and then I need to do laundry, juggle school, wrap a gift, put away the harvest, and somewhere find time to call Switzerland and write a bunch of cards. Pray for me to keep perspective, keep putting one foot in front of the other, and do, please, even if it makes me cry, ask me how I'm doing, and about my host mom. I need to take the time to keep finding those words..... and I also need some sleep.