Missing home

We're all missing home a bit now that we have been living in the South 9 months and have gone through the excitement, letdown, culture shock, and adjustment to living in a totally new place surrounded by new people and customs.

There's nothing like being totally out of your element to make one grateful for the friends, family, and places that make you feel like you belong, that remind you that your roots are firmly planted.  It feels good to know I have roots in a place, that when I return those elements will again nurture me.

This time disconnected from the people and places we know has been good, among many things, for helping us envision the future we want for ourselves and our family.  Being in an alien land (and I kid you not, the South is not just another region of the US -- it is truly another country) has helped my husband and I appreciate just what about New England we love.  And why we want to return there to make a life for ourselves.

Among many things, I was having fun envisioning a House.  I have no clue if and when we will buy or build our own place, but as I was driving around today I was noticing features about houses that I liked and didn't like and so I decided to make a little collage of houses that have that Certain Something I could really settle into someday:

Checking in with myself

In my last post, I put up 4 new wishes.  I have made progress on a few!  Here's the what-what:

1) I wish to lose those 30 lbs once and for all and maintain a fit, healthy lifestyle.
       - On my way on this wish!  I have been running and eating smaller portions for maybe 4 weeks now.  Am 8 pounds down!  Once I get to my first goal weight, I am going to celebrate by buying these boots.

2) I wish to be a NOLS instructor.
       - I have no idea how this will happen.  I mostly just really, really admire NOLS as a mission driven non-profit.  I was able to benefit twice from their leadership courses and from top to bottom, they run a tight ship.  So if this ever happens, bonus.  But I had my wonderful, formative experiences with them in my teen and early 20's years, so I can be grateful for that.

3) I wish to get a Master's degree.  In... something!
       - I think I may be honing in on this one!  For the longest time, I wanted to be an RN... well, for over 8 years I have played with the idea.  I even went to far at one point to get accepted to a program.  But when it came to choosing nursing school or my current job, I chose my current job.  So now I am considering getting an MBA with a focus on non-profit management.

4) I wish to take my husband and children to Germany to visit family and friends and so my children understand that part of their identity.
       - Yeah, that may not happen for a while, unfortunately.  The whole $$ thing.  But I do have some other great plans in the works that will prove to be vacations that are also lovely and fun. 


:-)

Wishes

It's 2012 and I want to make some random wishes.  I never want to forget my passions and even if they don't fit into my life right now, I don't want to forget these totally crazy dreams that excite me for different reasons:

1) I wish to lose those 30 lbs once and for all and maintain a fit, healthy lifestyle.

2) I wish to be a NOLS instructor.

3) I wish to get a Master's degree.  In... something!

4) I wish to take my husband and children to Germany to visit family and friends and so my children understand that part of their identity.

And right now, these are my wishes come true:

1) I have a man that I am beyond lucky to have in my life who I love beyond love.

2) My two children are smart and funny and already growing to not need me.

3) I have a job that is challenging AND fun.

4) I get to go camping and there is more camping in my future since buying a new tent.

HAPPY 2012 to ALL!

Count your blessings and dream big!

Let the joy in!

Winter Sunrise on a farm in Iowa (photo credit)

The season of Advent drew to a close last week.  With its ending, we leave behind the darkness, the contemplation, the reflection, and the waiting.  And now, whether we are ready or not, what we have been anticipating for 4 weeks has arrived.  A message and a messenger have come to us, holding a candle of light, a reminder.  The child of Mary, the symbol of so much goodness, is daring us to let the joy into our hearts.

I feel embarrassed to be fumbling with this moment; awkward in my response to this call.  It does not often happen that we really get what we want -- and need.  Yet here it is: happening -- for me, as a person of Christian persuasion, right this moment, through the symbolism of Advent and Christ's birth.  And I realize something:  I am better at waiting than I am at celebrating.

I am content to sit in the darkness instead of opening myself to the glimmer and the blaze of this message.  I am timid around this message, aware of how I feel vulnerable amidst this hope, eager to turn back to the stillness and the muted feel of Advent.

I was recently at Hunting Island State Park in South Carolina with my family, pants rolled up, heels pushed into the soft white sand of the beach.  I was watching my children run along the shoreline, stopping to collect a shell or two, turning cartwheels. My husband was near, inspecting an odd shell in the shallows of the surf by poking it with his toe.  We were all safe, warm, content.  All the pieces of the puzzle in my usually chaotic mind were in place.  And in that moment I felt joy.  I celebrated.  And in the sand I wrote, "You are free".

Those were the words that simply rose in my mind.  Like any good vacation, it ended, and our sometimes stressful and mundane life returned.

As the 12 days of Christmas unfurl before me, and we head into 2012, I am going to try to celebrate more.  The truth that seems to rise to the surface now, at the end of this writing, is that the joy and the darkness exist side by side, always.  One occasionally obscuring the other.  But both always there, taking turns.  And in taking turns, reminding me to listen to both their messages.  To enter joyfully this time of celebration just as solemnly as I entered the season of Advent.  To let those words, "You are free" rise to my mind more often and in more places than just a white sand beach.

On this fourth Sunday of Advent: imagining Mary.

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner

 I imagine Mary after the angel Gabriel left her.  After he made his declaration to her and then left her there, alone.  Her life was changed so completely and without her own forethought or control.   She must have sat there, deep in thought, knowing that once she moved she would be taking the first steps towards this great undertaking.  I imagine that she sat for a little longer then, caught between her life before Gabriel came and the life that was laid out before her, a life that now included carrying the child of God.

This story has a very special place in my heart.  I like to linger on the realization that Mary accepted her task with an open heart.  She moved forward into her new life, opening space in her heart for a son.

I think of my own life and the times it has been changed in ways I did not intend or predict.  That sort of change is unsettling and frightening and sometimes depressing.  When I think of how I got through those times, the first thing I think of are the people in my life who acted as anchors.  Those people who I would call at 11pm, those people who I trusted, the people in my life who reminded me of who I am.

I think of Mary and I wonder, "How did she not get lost in that great responsibility?"  I'll never really know the answer to that question.

As I light the fourth candle of Advent -- the candle of love -- I am awash in the love of and for my friends and family that surround me near and far -- and the love of God that knocks at my heart always, asking to be let in.