Feeling Less Purposeful

After five months of silence, I guess it's time to acknowledge that our months in Africa are over and we've been home for about six weeks. Settling into our much-missed home was easy in a lot of ways, but somehow its still taken this long for me to feel ready to blog again.

Last September, just before the DTS started, I wrote "For me these weeks have been slow—not only in the too-much-sleeping-in sense, but also in the sense that so little useful work leads to a dimming of vision." These past six weeks have been similar. Actually, we've had very little sleep this time around, but the general feeling is the same. We've settled back into home and healed from some of the not-so-pleasant things that happened the last few months. But I'm the to-do list type and check-marks keep me going...and right now its hard to say what our PURPOSE is. We're in this weird limbo stage between South Africa and Montana (where we'll be for about a year, starting at the end of June).

It's not that we aren't busy...we're actually doing a pretty cool assortment of things.

First, we're spending 60 hours a week with an old man who needs some one to help take care of him. Frank is absolutely adorable but dying of lung cancer, and we're making sure he gets his meds and doesn't forget to keep his oxygen in his nose.

Second, I'm helping coach the Jr High track & field team at PCA. And in my spare time (umm...maybe a window of 3 hours on Sundays?) training with my dearest sister to run a half marathon around lake Winnipesaukee on May 8th. So far, we're up to 11.5 miles of training.

On Sundays I help out in the Kindergarten Sunday School class, and in the evenings we have home group.

I clean houses a couple of times a week, and Jesse delivers mattresses and will be going back to his landscaping job if we can fit it in the schedule.

We're having doctor's appointments and filling out paperwork for Montana.

We've been reading quite a bit, too. Jesse's working on "Fool-proofing your life" by Jan Silvious, which I also read when we first got back. (I would totally recommend this one of you have some seriously foolish people in your life). Then I read "The Great Divorce" by CS Lewis and some novel that I can't remember the name of about a cult and a girl who sneaked in and uncovered the whole thing. Then I read "Surrendering to Marriage" by Iris Krasnow (which was quite refreshing and has made me remember to smile at my adorable husband more often) and since that went so well, I'm now working on Cosby's "Love & Marriage" book.

So, like I said, we're pretty busy. But sometimes this in-between stage feels pretty purposeless. A couple of months ago I could hardly wait to hop in the car and head to Montana. Today I want to clutch the front door, kiss the ground under my feet and beg the clock to stop ticking this time away from us. I run through all the reasons that we chose to go to Montana, and remind myself of the words God gave us to lead us there...and my heart just isn't convinced. I want to go. I know we will go. But part of me still isn't ready, and still isn't sure what we're doing here for this little blip of time. If there were every a moment I could label my emotions as "bittersweet" this is it. AH.

So in a little while I'll remember the vision we had/have for the future and I'll write about it, and we'll all blow up balloons and be excited about it together!