I'm Back... I Think

I've changed my daily routine a bit and now I'm doing my journaling and devotions during Kitty's naptime, which has freed up my precious two hours after the kid's bedtime to blog a little before I try to spend 90 minutes writing or editing.

I felt sad this evening at the thought of someday having to leave this house. I have poured a lot of love and effort into making our little half-acre into a beautiful spot, adding trees and flowers and a little landscaping. I discovered that I do have my family's love of all things bright and green. Seeing new leaves and growth is encouraging to me, as it reminds me that God's not finished with me either.

Only God knows what the future holds, but the life of a missionary is here and there. We are coming up on the halfway point for this three year term, which is good and bad. Good because having committed a certain amount of time to one place, we work hard on achieving the goals we've set and we hold material things lightly. But also bad because it can be hard to settle in sometimes, to open up and let myself get attached. And I've fallen in love with this fenced in space. I've never worked so hard to make somewhere home. We built this house, and the second floor. The land was just a sloped grassy hill when we bought it 13 years ago, so everything here, every touch has been ours. I don't want to let that go.

But the distance from our main body of work is weighing heavily on us, as well as our longing to spend more time with family. And I'm not going to give that up no matter how much I like my trees. We don't necessarily have to sell the place when it's time to move on, but we prefer owning to renting and we would like our own place in the capital city, our likely destination next term. But whenever I think of the future, I hear my mom's voice saying, "Stop worrying, enjoy today." Or the other place I'd like to work is a large city on the coast. Church. Beach. Or maybe church on the beach. Yes.

So I know that the Lord has more good things for us in the future and I'm going to continue planting flowers for me and peas for Kitty (she loves to eat them raw out of the pod). Raccoon is checking his ducks every day for eggs, even though they are just getting their feathers in. We let them out into the yard in the mornings, but only under strict supervision since Teddy and Morita have been given an indefinite pardon for the last fowl incident. Raccoon made his two ducks a large nesting box and filled it with fresh grass, but today all 9 ducks and chickens were snuggled up in it together, so he was thrilled.

I think Storm is barking at Gerry, our cat, so I'm off to let him in.