transition: on purpose

passing back a banana clip

In the past few days, we've done about seven hours in the car with a three year old, two year old, and one year old. Now listen - at some point, there is not much you can do as you're driving with that many basically-babies. At some point, you have to kind of tune them out and read a book. But - before it gets that bad, a plan is helpful. With my kids, the plan is to gather as many every day materials that they will find fascinating for whole minutes at a time. Toothbrushes, cell phone chargers, hair clips, cell phones, pens, grocery receipts, earrings, you name it. For whatever reason - normal everyday objects trump coloring books and kids movies every day with my kooks. So what I'm saying is this - if I just jumped in the car with no preparation, that car ride would hit me like a lamp falling on my face (too soon?), busting me up in all sorts of ways. Those crazies would eat me a live and we'd just possibly never make it to our destination.

then, it was too soon.

The first few days I was here on the east coast, I was such a weirdo. I couldn't hold a conversation without tearing up or falling asleep. A basic question, "where are you from?" became a ten minute conversation that I needed a glass of water halfway through to complete. Just plain sad about leaving Seattle, flirting around the edges of excited about moving to Boston, overwhelmed at the transition in between. It was too much. After my first forty-eight hours or so, my mom explained that they were refraining from asking me too many church-planting-y questions on purpose, so I wouldn't have a mental breakdown and I was thankful. The next day, I spent time with my stepmom, who was preparing to move to Germany from Malaysia, after a two month long stint in North Carolina (which makes our Seattle/Boston adventure look a little tame). I was asking her, "how do I cope? how do I be sad or get excited and raise three kids and blah blah blah". She looked at me very honestly and said, "you just don't think about it". So for that space in time, I was more than thankful for the people who didn't ask me to think about it and gave me a free pass to live a little less on purpose.

but, now.

But now we're almost a month in and hopefully just a few weeks out from living in Boston and it's time to live on purpose. To live in transition, on purpose. It's time to cry when one of my best friends in Seattle has her baby that I want to hold and to spend hours on craigslist in Boston, getting excited. It's time to pray fervently for the people we'll meet in Charlestown and to pray fervently with my kids when this transition becomes too much for them. It's time to finish fundraising and tell as many people to pray for the gospel going forth in Boston. It's time to sit for thirty minutes or so with my grandmother and explain to her what, "planting a church" means and to love the excitement in her eyes as she understands. It's time to get these dumb stitches out. Time to let my husband talk for hours on date nights and get some business cards printed. Basically, I've just been letting myself live like a little chew toy that a dog nudges around a house, without any will or purpose in my days - letting each emotion, event, person, and day scoot me around and have it's way with my heart. It's time to get up early again and let Jesus have His way with my heart. To let the comfort of following him trump any and all transitional feeling.

Amen? Amen.