Hmmmm. I don't know how I feel about all that 2015 holds.
FIFTEEN? years since I graduated high school? thirteen years since I met Nels? Hazel will turn 12? Lilie 10? Elsie will be 8 and baptized? Violet will start Kindergarten and my baby is going to turn FOUR?
I don't know how I feel about 2015...
One year ago exactly, we moved to Pullman. So while I've been looking ahead at this new year, I've spent even more time looking backward - sifting through to figure out what I've learned and what I'd like this new year to be. This post reminds me of why I haven't written much in the last few years: it's really hard to sift out what's relevant and true while so much change is taking place. It feels messy. This post is messy, but I'll try my best to write some things that are real.
New Year's Eve 2013 I spent the day alone. Nels and the girls had left two days earlier - his first day at the new job had been the 30th. Movers in and out all day and our things getting wrapped into random boxes. I was so exhausted physically and emotionally that I fell asleep repeatedly as I sat watching them, pretending to read a book and trying to stay out of the way. Afterward, I quickly finished cleaning our empty home and deposited our remaining keys in the rental office drop-box so that I could make the 3 hour drive down to Colfax to ring in the new year with my family.
I cried and cried as I crossed the Long Bridge. As our Sandpoint chapter closed.
Throughout the three hour, tear-filled, foggy drive from Sandpoint, I prayed. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for a new job, but I didn't like Pullman. It was hard for me to again leave years of social investment. We were going to be downgrading our living space again. And we were leaving beautiful Sandpoint for a windy, rolling, brown place. The year-round beauty of Sandpoint had carried me through the hardest years of my life. To leave was pain.
Just before dropping into the hollow where Tom and Tracy live, I turned off my car on the top of an impossibly quiet hill, far from city lights, surrounded by frozen fields, and just above the fog that had enveloped me the entire drive and I pleaded.
Please . . .
And the Lord answered. I cried and I know I was heard. I didn't get the feeling that this year would be simple or that all my worries would just fall away, but I knew that I had a Father that heard me and understood. And really, that's what I needed.
With my hand on the key and ready to cover the last mile of transition to our new lives, I looked up and saw the brightest falling star and I made a wish that this move would be good for us.
Has it been good? Yes, but - good does not always equal rainbows and butterflies. In fact, good usually equals Hard Work. Also, I don't think that one year is enough time to put into perspective all that's come with this move.
If I were to describe 2014 in a word, it would probably be: Disconnected.
An uncomfortable feeling, but probably better than INSANE or CHAOTIC or FRUSTRATED which could have been used to describe previous years, so . . . there's that. :)
Two things I've learned and am going to be working on this coming year:
1. Being connected to the physical world around me is vitally important to my emotional health. In Sandpoint, this was SO EASY. Every season was beautiful and there was always something to explore. I long for it and feeling this disconnect has really made me question whether or not Pullman can be our home forever. It's time for me to fall in love again. This year I plan to spend more time experiencing the area and finding us a place to live where we feel connected to the earth. No more Hobbit House in the ground - it's sucking the life out me.
2. Being connected to the people around me and finding ways to serve is vitally important to my emotional health. I would say that as an adult woman the single hardest thing about moving is losing a sense of place, of community - of someone knowing me and needing me. I don't want to be busy just for the sake of being involved. I don't want to be busy at all. No, I just want to feel needed - not to be a body filling a role, but to be Rachel doing what I do best (whatever that is). This is something that takes TIME and EFFORT and then more TIME. This year, I'm going to pray and then look for opportunities to serve and be connected. I need physical friends.
I don't exactly know how to wrap up this messy/weird post, but it's going to be a GOOD year. I can feel it.
I'm thankful for another year to grow and to watch my children grow. I'm looking forward to feeling more connected to the world and people around me, to my Nels and my kids, to my Heavenly Father and to myself.
