Ever ironic

A friend mentioned the author Lisa Samson to me in response to a question about what she'd been reading lately. Because I really have a lot of spare time for reading right now, I scanned the shelves in the library the next time we went. Wait. Strike that. I mean, because I enjoy reading and it is a way to relax and unwind and the thought of a good book always gets my attention, I searched out her writings, and after pulling a few of the possibilities (of which there were several) off of the shelf, left with Quaker Summer. It falls into the category of Christian fiction, and while it isn't heavy duty reading, it is coming alongside a lot of other things that have been going on in my head this month, as well as previous reads this year that were in similar veins.

Tonight this: "Well, that's good. It's when we believe we have all the answers that we find ourselves in trouble."

I could have read over that passage at some other time and not have even noticed it, but it jumped out at me tonight because this whole humbling business of parenting is revealing to me that I've fallen into that trap and am at the point of being at God's mercy and having to turn to Him as there is really no where else to go.

Earlier in the book: "See, right now, I'm living in a puzzle, the box lid having just been taken off, and I stare down onto the pieces, some clear, some hidden, and they work together somehow, but I'm just looking at them, smelling the woody pulp, and wondering, all the while knowing it's designed to do so, how in the world I'll make it all fit together and look like something real. Even the box lid sports no picture to guide me."

My sentiments exactly (though I was not the brains behind that analogy)! We rented when we moved here with the intention of taking some time to look and find our own place, once we had a better idea of where it would be best to try and live and so forth. So some aspects of life have been in suspended animation, while time and life continues to march right on by. As we near the completion of that process of finding and moving into a more "permanent" home, I sense that we can start to take some of the pieces out of the box and fiddle with them soon.

There are evaluations of our homeschooling and parenting journeys that are discouraging, and need to be tweaked (with hope that it is still possible to make corrections to the course of this ship), and wonderings about what our place is here. While there is some familiarity and comfort, it is also all strange and new, not just for us, but for our kids. One has especially been missing friends from home today and asked several times about them. It didn't hit right away, but the loneliness and lack of friends is starting to sink in, especially for our pre-teen/middleschool aged child. We miss the families that we spent time with, whose childrens' genders and ages aligned well enough with ours, to make hanging out together enjoyable for all. Hopefully once we are more physically settled in to our own home, we can spend more of our energy in seeking out and developing new relationships here.

While there are days I wonder if this was the right thing to do - if we were truly in God's will in this move, or if it would not have been more desirable to stay where we were - there is a just slightly discernible sense in the midst of all the mental and physical hub bub, that this is where God wants us right now, though we can't see what the picture is on the puzzle and it seems like a mess that the lid should not have been taken off of.