It’s always something

From 2009 to 2014, I waited.

I waited to get to Nepal, because then, things would settle down for a bit. In Nepal, I said, I’d be able to finally (finally!) rest in that perfect peace of knowing that life was at an even keel. My heart wouldn’t be burdened by a years’-long timeline, or a to-do list that spanned continents and oceans.

Finally, we would be still.

IMG_7528In the meantime, I adopted two children, gave birth to two more, and fought bitterly the frustration of being unable to lay legal claim to another. I headed up an Awana Cubbies program, stepped back, then did it all again. I ushered kids through their homeschool paces, graduating one. I ran a house. I buried my grandfather. I visited churches, raising mission support. I shuttled kids to swimming lessons, karate, 4H. I replaced appliances, paid taxes, hosted foster children.

I was busy with the stuff of life, and I was convinced that someday, somehow, it would slow down.

Of course, it didn’t. I can sit here today and blame any number of events for continuing the wheel of activity. I can point at our leaving Nepal, our third bonus biological baby, a husband whose job it is to travel the globe. But let’s be honest — the real reason I have never found that season of perfect rest is that I am alive. And part of the red tape that wraps up a life well-lived is a steady carousel of doing.

IMG_7523Yes, there are seasons of a little less doing. But folks, it’s all relative. When I look back on what I now see was probably the quietest season of my life, I am struck with how each day seemed full to the point of bubbling over. I had just quit working outside the home. My daughter was nine months old. We were in a new community where I knew virtually no one. I had no obligations save the one that said, “Feed and clothe these people.” My husband worked tirelessly, around the clock, leaving me with endless evening hours to fill.

When I look back on all those hours comparatively empty, all that time just begging for purpose, I’m tempted to chastise myself for wasting the days. But I didn’t. My mornings were taken up with breakfasts, clean up, nature walks, and coloring. Then there was lunch, and a nap, a scurry through household chores, a snack, some laundry, and time outside in the porch swing reading anything and everything my little one would sit still for. Evenings centered on cooking with a toddler at my side, eating, baths, more stories, and, finally, cleaning up the day and putting the house in order so that the next morning, all was at the ready again.

If I could do it all over again, I would. And you know what? I’d feel just as busy as I did back then.

Because life is never still. There’s always a next thing.

IMG_7521There’s always a dishwasher on the fritz, a car that needs a tune up, a child struggling with a character issue. There’s always flu season and an upcoming birthday and tuition due. There’s always travel, and dirty clothes, and change after change shaking who we think we are.

It’s always something. Literally.

Right now, I’m sorely tempted to look at this fall as an arrival place. We’ll be settled. We’ll be in a routine. We’ll be laying down roots. Like the young couple that delays that first baby until they’ve bought a house, paid off the car, and celebrated their fifth anniversary, I feel myself holding a checklist of boxes, paperwork, moving trucks and thinking, “When we get through this part, life will begin!”

Except, it’s here. Now. Life is happening in this space, and it is a good life. So I’m taking my own advice — the same tidbit of wisdom I have offered countless times to those folks who I see putting their lives on hold — and I’m enjoying this blip of time.

The packing? I’m remembering the amazing people who gifted us these belongings when we needed them most. The endless march of paperwork for the mortgage, the umbrella school, the storage, the transfer of this utility or that medical file? I’m praising God for the ability to do this at all. The unexpected week of in between that sits smack in the middle of our move? I’m considering it a much-deserved, just-us mini-vacation. We haven’t gone away without the purposes of meeting supporters, visiting extended family, or working in some fashion in five years, when we went to Great Wolf Lodge for a single night. So what if we’re in limbo, broke, and trying to quash anxieties in kids who have moved more than any sane person ought? This is it.

There’s always something. And when we are moved in and the van needs a tire, or the littles get the chicken pox, or I spend days trying to get the internet set up, it’ll be something else. It will keep coming, keep adding up, for as long as I live. There will never be a perfect time for anything, let alone rest, and quiet, and days that stretch with no to-do list attached. And I’m ok with that because, honestly, it means there is more life to be lived still waiting.