Pardon my unacceptable excuses

I realize that I have majorly dropped the ball with the blogging thing. I have appreciated the people who have told me that they are waiting for more pictures and stories from Kayla's and my trip, because it makes me excited that people have read and care. In my free time in the last half of our time in Belgium I slept or just didn't have the umph to blog about everything, and the two weeks of travel were a whirlwind. So...

As of five days ago we have been back for a month, which is just crazy. I never thought re-acclimating would be very difficult, but really, everything else in my life has not gone as expected, so I don't know why I wasn't expecting the diving back into reality process to be more difficult. Silly me. 

In the midst of sleeping, TV bingeing, family time, friend time, decompressing, and just getting used to the reality that is the U.S.A., I have been slowly working through the 1,000+ photos that I have taken over the past four-ish months. I am so close, but other things have come to the forefront, like moving, and birthdays, and weddings, and, and, and... 

This week we have been trying to move everything out of the house Kayla and I had been living in to my parent's house, which has made my parent's house a mess. Today we have to finish the last of it, clean up my parents house, and get ready to leave to visit family in Oklahoma on Wednesday, and celebrate my brother's birthday between there somewhere. 

Guess what? Life keeps happening while you are gone for three and a half months, and when you come back it does not slow down for you to adjust to it. Or to blog about it. Though really, if I sat down to catalog my time over the past month, I have definitely had time to finish my pictures and blog, but I just haven't been ready to process everything all at once. I have been processing my time there in little snippets of shared stories with friends, family, and a church staff meeting. But other than those moments I haven't really sat down by myself to work on writing stories and lessons. It is just so vast and overwhelming at times. If I think about all of that time, sometimes I feel overwhelmingly blessed by everything that I went through and everything I learned, and sometimes I am bowled over by the hardships and things that I just had to brush off and not deal with at the moment. 

Now that I am past most of the HOLY CRAP moments of adjusting to life here and dealing with life there, I feel like I am ready to dive into processing and regurgitating mode. So I am being optimistic that you will begin seeing more posts about Belgium and beyond once we get back from the Oklahoma family extravaganza. Stay tuned.

New Mexico!!!

Happy to be back in this loveliness.

The-places-that-are-not-home

     Life is about moving forward. Time goes in one direction and that is ahead. But sometimes we take moving forward to the extreme and have to constantly be looking for the next best thing. We do this in stages of life: when you are in High School you want to be in college, then in college you want to be married, then when you finally reach that *unreachable, idealistic, glorious, magical end* that is marriage you feel incomplete without a child. It just goes on and on. Having goals is great. But pushing and dreaming for the next best thing to the point where we forget to live and just be is unhealthy and even *gasp* sinful. I do this just as well as others. I am constantly in my own head, dreaming up my next big adventure and dredging up those dreadful "what ifs,"  but I go a step farther and do it with places.

     I always have an idealistic city where I want to go and live independently, where I will accomplish all of my goals and meet all of my unrealized potential, and where I am never discontent with my city that I love as dear as a friend. I think that it will be this supernatural thing when I see my city for the first time. I will get there and see it and just know that I belong. Until I meet that magical place that I feel fits me so well, that makes me feel as comfortable and content as hot coffee on the coldest winter day, I feel like I am dating the places I live, and I suppose that makes the places I visit a weekend fling. 

     I have gone through many cites in my mind and I'm sure they will come back around and be the city of the moment again. But I think it has less to do with the actual city than with the person I want to be and am not now. When I dream about living in these cities I always think of being strong and independent, happy and friendly to all I cross paths with, being a maker and discoverer of beauty, and a person who finds the eternal value in everything she sees and finds joy in the small things. I could probably be that person and do those things just as well in Albuquerque, New Mexico as I could in New York City, Seattle, Chicago, or Los Angeles.

     It's not that I hate the place I live now, or even dislike it. I do like a lot of things about good ol' ABQ, though it did take me awhile. Before I moved here with my dear family I had never lived anywhere else but the place we moved from. I spent the first 18 years of my life living in Norman, Oklahoma. It's the place I knew as home for a long time (and I think deserves a post in itself) and when we moved for the first time something must have broken in me, twisted just the right way to make it snap, to make me forever feel displaced. If we could move from Norman, we could move at any time to any place, so how can I put down roots if I don't know where I belong? Even through this feeling I have learned to like it here, learned to love people here, and let several people know me. Sometimes, though I just can't escape the feeling that there are more worlds to discover.

     So, yes dreaming is good to a point and moving is good (depending on how you look at it), traveling is great, but there is something to be said for staying put and living where you are.

     I think I need to rediscover my current city and be more intentional about looking for beauty in everyday life. After awhile, any place can become normal and mundane, and I'm sure that if I was able to move to New York tomorrow, after 16 months the rose-colored-glasses would come off and I would be looking for a new city to set my dreams on. If I change my mindset my life would follow. This won't happen immediately and I know myself enough to know that I can't really give myself ultimatums. I will still dream about other places and live vicariously through amazing people that get to see amazing things (Read this blog. Read all of it. Start from the beginning.). But I think that this is a small part of a life-long lesson for me. It's only a tiny part of being grateful and thankful for everything that is given to me.

     Eventually maybe I will be able to get to the point of what Jim Elliot said: "Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God."