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Jack is home; Mary Hannah is gone. The revolving door that seems to have been installed in our family– the one that will stay in motion, no doubt, until Jude is old enough to swept up in it– is doing its work here. In, and out, and in again … over and over, I watch bags be packed and add traveling snacks to the grocery list, I make “Welcome Home” banners with the littles ones, I plan homecoming meals. Missions, and college, and camp, and missions again.
This is life. The new norm. I either choose to rejoice at all these comings and goings– all these opportunities to serve, to learn, to follow God’s call– or I dig in and declare that I refuse to let this be.
And then I watch as they do it all, anyhow.
Because nothing stays the same. Life was never meant to be stagnant. Our traditions, our preferences … they’re all at the whim of the season in which we find ourselves, no matter how frantically we cling to what once was.
If I sound peaceful about it, if I sound like I’ve easily softened to this new reality, think again. I’ve spent many a prayer session lamenting the shortness of the time past, and the wide open space that seems to stare back at me when I look too awfully far ahead. I’ve caught my breath counting the number of holiday meals that won’t involve my children traveling home, should they choose, to sit around our table again. But things have changed. Are changing. Will continue to change at a pace that will only quicken as the years go by.
Christopher has so many trips coming up. So many. And while I get excited thinking about the way God is using him all over the globe, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that every one of those trips takes him far from me, and I am not too proud to say that I am a woman who likes to know that her man will be filling his side of the bed every night. The season of two trips a year is gone. The work is bigger than that now, and it’s a blessing. But it’s another change, and one I still have to fully absorb.
Mary Hannah has just begun her third semester at Mercy in Action College of Midwifery. Most days she is still here, studying in her room, lining littles up to practice taking pulses. Her physical presence, though, will be less and less soon enough. Once she secures a preceptor, life will change radically. And while that is very, very good (another step towards graduation!) it’s also going to bring to an end so many of the little things we take for granted every day: snuggles with Simon on her bed as she works, reading Best-Loved Folktales of the World to a gaggle of squirmy kids vying to be on her lap, teasing with her teenage brothers as they work their way through the dishes at breakfast. I am glad for all the memories I will have of witnessing those moments. But the moments giving way to mere memory? There’s the tug.
Mathaus will be heading to his very first college visit in a few short weeks. Bryan College, here in Tennessee, has a film department, and Mathaus is keen to check it out. We’ll be chatting with the admissions folks, checking his transcript against their wishlist, and getting the lay of the land academically and spiritually. It’s so hard for me to believe that Mathaus– my strawberry blonde moppet– is a junior in high school. And yet … there it is.
Jack loved his missions aviation camp, and came home pretty sure that, like his older sister, a traditional college is not in his future. He’s as excited as ever about planes, flying, and getting the Gospel into hard-to-reach places. For right now, though, he has to keep cutting his teeth on some solid education. He’s a freshman this year, and he’s digging in to Sonlight’s Core 300, slightly modified. He’s also participating in a brand new local STEM co-op that will let him get his hands dirty as his brain works. He’ll be racking up more travel miles soon, though, as he heads to Haiti with his Dad.
And while I’ve always had Ways I’ve Done Things, this year, I’m learning a new trick, too. Our time in Waxhaw was marked by several wonderful family relationships– but no real friends for my littles. While they definitely aren’t any the worse for it (Seriously, there are five of them! They make their own social gravity!) I have prayed for opportunities to bring sweet friends, especially, to John Mark and Birdie. God presented an opportunity for both of them (and me) in the form of a new Classical Conversations community starting in our area. Our family has never been the “color inside the lines” type, and in 16 years of homeschooling, we’ve never taken our curriculum cues from anyone other than God, my husband, and myself. But this group of women have already proven themselves lovely and welcoming, and I’m looking forward to something different. I’m also looking forward to this year’s planned read-alouds, starting with Ember Falls (due in our mailbox any day!), On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic, and James and the Giant Peach. The steady rhythm of our daily basket time and read-alouds should, I think, help us over the hump of adjusting to CC.
So there you have it. A life uprooted, relocated, and … still, always in flux. Because there is no “normal.” There is no “when things quiet down.” There’s only the gift of growing people, striking out, seeking God’s will, and moving to embrace the life He gave them.