We are here for a family reunion. Mike and most of the kids are still down at the lodge where Mike’s siblings and their families are staying, but I brought the youngest two back to our place for bed.
I’m feeling such an unexpected sense of peace and just happiness being in our little cabin tonight. I’m not sure what it is. I’d been stressed to come. It’s not good timing for a reunion for us. (It’s not good timing for anything for us right now.) And I assumed I would just feel anxious to be putting a week-long pause on everything needing done right now. But I haven’t been to our cabin since early April, and I must have forgotten how much I love it here. Especially in the summer. And maybe, with so much of our lives in upheaval and a bit scattered right now, coming here just feels like a reminder of what it was to feel settled and familiar. This place isn’t unknown and half set up with belongings like the rental is. And it isn’t slowly being emptied out like home is. And it’s not demanding anything from me either. No asking that we figure out new routines and friendships and places. And no asking that we repaint and clear out and fix up. It’s just here. Comfortable and known and accepting. I hadn’t anticipated feeling a relief and a reprieve here, but it seems almost like I’ve been away on an exhausting journey and I’ve just returned home. It sounds silly, but I almost feel like our little cabin just wrapped it’s arms around me in an embrace.
I seem to have, whether of necessity or as a protection of sorts, stifled much of my emotion of late. There simply hasn’t been time (or maybe it’s that there has been too much time—too long of this) to keep feeling all the emotions of endings and goodbyes and change. Goldie leaving. Ward members I love who I will no longer associate with. Teachers, and my kids’ friends, and their friends’ parents, and the places we go and the things we do. Our backyard. My running routes. All of my kids emotions. Too many things. And I feel I’ve just placed a big wall up. “Do not enter sentiment and loss! No time to think about or feel any of that now! There are things to be packed! Cupboards to be cleaned! Arrangements to be made!” Every time another person tells me how sad they are that we are leaving I respond on sort of auto mode—expressing something that I feel sounds like an appropriately similar sentiment of sadness. But I don’t feel it at all. (Which is nonsense really. Because somewhere I know I do feel all of it. And if I even think directly of any one or two small people or things I can sense that it very well could pierce me right to the heart.)
I don’t know what it is. Mike says it’s too long of a goodbye. (Though heaven knows how we could have done it any quicker than we have!) And he might be right. How does the saying go? “The best way to cut off a dog’s tail is all at once not an inch at a time.” (That’s a terrible saying by the way. I still recall the first time I heard it. Someone said it in one of my high school seminary classes. And all I could think was, “Cut off a dog’s tail???”)
But here at our cabin tonight I feel ensconced in a place where I can let whatever wall I’ve been functioning behind down without fear of anything but comfortable and safe sensations entering in.
Still, since the move (and all its associated practical and emotional complexities) are my constant reality right now, I will say a few things more about it.
1. The other day when I was lamenting to Mike that there was no way everything was going to work out and get done (I need Mike to give me rather major reassurance on those points at least once a week), he comforted, “Sure it will. Enough time and money and we’ll get everything done.” And then I asked him, “Did you just say everything would be fine with ‘enough time and money’? The two things we do not have?” And then we had a good laugh. And sometimes, I guess, that’s the best reassurance one can give. A good laugh.
2. I’ve felt, throughout this process of trying to figure what things to accomplish each day and how to organize things, a constant and rather desperate need to have daily guidance and wisdom from my Savior on how to do it and what to work on next. “O … God, … we have no might against this great company … neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee.” It’s felt too daunting to figure out on my own, and I’ve plead for that help somewhat frantically and with a fair amount of anxious doubt about His concern over such spiritually insignificant details as how to go about packing up craft cupboards and teenage-girl bathrooms. (Which is silly, I know. I could reassure any of my loved ones of His help in the smallest details of their lives with absolute confidence. But in my own head and with my own details fear creeps in.) And, of course, I’ve wondered often if this all matters. If this entire MOVE really matters. If it’s significant and important to God and His plans for my family.
Anyway, during one of my sleepless nights filled with desperate prayer, these words from the familiar hymn came to my mind. “Be still my soul, thy God doth undertake to guide the future as he has the past. Thy hope thy confidence let nothing shake …”. I knew the Spirit was telling me not to let anything shake my confidence in HIM—in his willing guidance and help. And I’ve been thinking ever since of the promise that was to me: My Heavenly Parents. Christ. Undertaking the job of guiding my future just as they have my past. Because my past! They’ve guided me to so many good things! And through so many hard things! And protected me from so many pitfalls! Israel, my college major, MIKE!, our Fruitland drive house, moving to Washington, our current house, the guidance that lead to all ten of our children. Connections and relationships. I’ve just been reciting all the specific wonders of my life up to this point. And it IS giving me confidence in what that means for my future—stated well in this great verse from Deuteronomy 2 that Penny reminded me of the other day:
“For the Lord thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.”
And now Anders, who also came back to the cabin with me, is seeming lonesome and asking me to play a game. So with all of the above thoughts (and not a single picture!?), I will close this post out for the night.
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