Leaving what you have always known, leaving the life you’ve always loved has this way of forcing you down into the depths of your beating heart.  It plunges you into these places of gratefulness and sadness and hope and clarity in a way  that I’m not sure I’ve experienced before. It has opened my eyes to, well, a lot of things.  Things I wished I’d done differently in Urbana; what I really want out of this murky, jumbled, unpredictable, beloved life.  It has highlighted my weaknesses.  It has emboldened my strengths.  And, boy, it has strengthened my ever-tightening grip on the truth of the Word of God.

So here goes my stream of consciousness—buckle up and try* to stay focused (HA!)—something I’m struggling to do as my fingers jump fiercely from key to key.

Since moving here, I’ve had some pretty low lows, and some surprisingly high highs. I’ve been encouraged by my motivation some days and drug down by my lack thereof on others.  I get ramped up about sensory bins with my kids one day, and I plop them in front of the TV another.  I have all of the laundry folded and put away on Monday, and am swimming in peed-on, river-muddy pants by the time the next Monday rolls around.  I cook healthy well-rounded meals everyday one week, and we have boxed macaroni, Papa Murphy’s, cereal, and leftovers the next.  Some of this is certainly my personality, however, I think mostly it can be attributed to becoming acclimated to a new place.  It’s evidence to me that it’s just not “home” yet.  Which sucks most of the time.

As the lows become shallower, and the highs become a little more normal, I am beginning to see a lot of what I miss about Illinois.  I miss people who walked through the best and worst with me.  I miss people who walked through my mom’s death with me, who walked with me through my “motherhood” to N and X, who showed up to court when we adopted Martell, who brought me meals and tiny onesies when Esmae was born, who booked mini-sessions with me as my photography business launched, who sat with me in my basement wayyyyy past my bedtime crying over injustice with me and rubbing the knots out of my stressed-out back.  I miss all of the places I walked to—the library, Carle Park, the Farmer’s Market, Sarah and Kam’s backyard where we’d stop on occasion for a beer on a bored Saturday afternoon, the Coop where I’d rattle off my owner number as I’d checkout, the corner of Urbana and California to meet our best buddies for a stroll to where we thought was nowhere important (but it turns out the ordinary is the most important), Rigg’s where we’d let the kids run around on the wooden tractor in the middle of corn fields as we sipped and laughed with friends.  I miss our home—its legacy, the people who gathered there each Thursday evening, it’s precious nooks and crannies where our kids hid and giggled.

When it’s all left behind—when it all becomes a memory—a part of the past; it’s so easy to strip away anything—everything negative.  It’s easy to forget that we had been prepared for, almost awaiting change.  It’s easy to forget some of the ways I was too intimidated to invite myself to things with people I’d known forever for fear of being intrusive.  It’s easy to forget the loneliness I felt although I was surrounded by people I loved dearly.  It’s easy to forget the number of difficult transitions I’d experienced there—ones that left me reeling and questioning so much.  It’s easy to forget the difficulty in our marriage as we experienced grief, growing pains, anxiety, foster care, and loss of friends from our ever-transient community.  It’s easy to forget the hard when you’re lurched into the unknown where everything feels hard for a while.

But here’s what I’m learning.  When everything around us changes, we’re forced to acknowledge what we value—what we want to carry on with us into our present, into our future

• I want to fear people less.
• I want to see people the way Jesus sees them.
• I want different kinds of friends—people like me and people who are vastly different because we’re all created in the image of God, and we’re all equals in this world.
• I want to serve and live outside of my comfort.
• I want to love orphans radically.
• I want to name my dreams and run after them.
• I want to be surprised less by my humanity—grip tightly to grace, and move forward transformed rather than living in guilt.
• I want to see the Holy Spirit move in and through me for healing, hope, reconciliation, and life.
• I want to believe in myself humbly and unapologetically.
• I want to lay down any need for respect or acknowledgement.
• I want to help people recognize that what they have is a beautiful gift, find contentedness and yet enter into their pain and loss with them in a profound way.
• I don’t want to waste time hesitating in relationship—why not dive in with two feet?  What do we really have to lose?
• I want our home to be holy ground—a place where people come and feel free to spill their guts safely, and a place of freedom—laughter, carelessness, and authenticity.

There are more things welling in my heart—big things that I know the Lord is working out in our future.  Things that have to do with the trajectory of our family, and our kids and sacrifice, but I’m still all mixed up with much of it.

As I read this back through to myself, my jumbled stream of consciousness—I guess I’m seeing that my vision has been blurred by the welling tears as we’ve moved and left so much behind; but as the time ticks on, as it audaciously marches forward and the tears fall less, I’m realizing that my vision is sharper than before.  The truth is settling in that here is where we’re meant to be for now.  And that’s a good thing in the end.  I feel like maybe I’m finally stepping into who I am with more assurance.  Thank you, Jesus.