Seasons of change...

Much has been happening for our little family in the last few weeks! Shane and I are excited to have some open doors in going south for an indefinite amount of time to help out with Call2All! We are presently down in Kansas City for 19 days of training, returning home for a month and then heading back down here to participate in the June Intimacy 2 Impact Discipleship Training School!

If time allows, I think getting back into blogging would be a great outlet for me! Becoming a mom has been quite the adjustment and now figuring out how to be a mom, wife, woman, lover of Jesus, and so much more in a new environment, far from my friends, family and my “normal” is a big adjustment! The reality of the hugeness of this jump is becoming more and more real over the last 5 days since we got here. There are parts I’m excited about and parts where the sacrifice feels very real.

The new environment, home, noises and schedule have been a bit daunting. We have a 2-bedroom apartment back home, where we’ve lived since Shane and I got married almost 8 years ago. I always hoped that the next step would be a house of our own! Well, I had a little cry when I found out not long ago that we were coming to a 1-bedroom apartment. In my head I worked it out by figuring we’d give Noah the bedroom and we’d sleep in the living room. Now that we’re here, putting our bed in the living room just isn’t practical for enjoying our living space, so we are adjusting to living in a bedroom with all 3 of us.

I’m getting a taste of missionary living with children. My little one naps and begins the night on a little bed that I’ve made for him with a blanket laid out on the floor of the walk-in closet, with his lion, Leo, from home whom he likes to talk to when going to sleep. It’s taking a little getting used to crawling into bed at night, knowing that my baby is sleeping in the same room as us. We haven’t done that since he moved to his crib at 1 month old. When he wakes to feed in the middle of the night, I take him to the living room and feed him on the love seat before transferring him into the pack and play, which is set up in the living room. It doesn’t fit in the closet. There he sleeps until morning. It was a little tender to my mommy heart the first few days putting my beautiful baby to sleep on the floor of a closet. The ache of the sacrifice felt real for me in that moment.

Thinking that this is a longer arrangement then just 19 days has been a little overwhelming at moments. How do we all live and sleep in the same room as a family? I think of all the families during our DTS that did it and wonder how they did. Our school leader, Debbie, has comforted me, telling me that it will only get easier. They’ve done it with their 2 kids in many different housing situations.

Then today, I got a touch of encouragement and perspective. Noah and I were “shopping” down the hall from our place in the newly forming boutique (the place where you can take stuff that other’s drop off…like a free Good Will store). On our way back, I said hi to a guy washing the walls in the hallway. I’m glad I did =) I went on to learn that he and his wife are hoping to move to the base and I believe they are the ones that the other 2-bedroom apartment is being saved for. I sure have wanted that 2 bedroom. They have been living in a 1-bedroom apartment for the last 1.5 years. And get this. They have 4 children between the ages of 9 months and 5 years. That is some serious perspective. I confessed that I’ve been having a tough time thinking of living in a 1-bedroom with 1 child and asked him how they do it with 4 children and 2 adults in one bedroom. He gave me some practical tips and shared the joys that have come as a family from the experience. He said that he is actually going to miss it when they aren’t together in the same room.

My heart left encouraged. This isn’t impossible. God will make a way. Not only will we survive but we’ll flourish. Noah and I pray for our day and invite Jesus into it every morning. As part of our prayer, we ask that the Lord would cause love to abound in our home and hearts with one another. This may be an opportunity that will cause just that.