A long overdue update ...

Hello, friends! Wow, how has it been 6 months since I last posted?! My apologies. Fair warning, this post will be a bit all over the place and I'm just going to try to update you on all the things in the last half a year that I've been absent. My last post was in September and that's about where things went a bit crazy for me. Well, let me back up. I think it's no surprise to anyone who has been around for awhile (probably most since my instagram days) that these last few years have been full of major life changes and really hard things. I have wanted so badly to be ok and to be thriving and have roots but it has been a lot longer of a road than I would have liked it to be. I have felt so displaced and so heavy hearted for so long. It was hard to process everything in the face of such tremendous blessing and provision from the Lord because it made me feel so ungrateful that I was struggling emotionally so much when the Lord had been so good to us. It was that very confusing mix of so much good coupled with so much hard and it was extremely difficult to navigate for me. It has not been a straight journey to healing like I would have liked and the last couple years have held many ups and downs but also so much growth and thankfulness.

So, back to September. I started having chronic bladder infections which is something that I have not struggled with before. I think I had had 2 bladder infections in my life prior to this and then I had 4 in 3 months time. I went in to see someone and I tested for West Nile (which I had never heard about before but apparently is very prevalent where we live) and they said that it picks a bacteria rich place to propagate and that it had picked my bladder. I was on things for it and during that time my immune system was so low and I think I got every single thing that was floating around last fall! It seemed that as soon as I got over one thing, I came down with something else. And the exhaustion. Oh my word. I have not known exhaustion like I knew last fall. It was awful. I did the bare minimum to keep the household running and spent most of my afternoons on the couch. I was pretty wiped. I started regaining some energy towards Thanksgiving but it's been mostly since the beginning of the year that my energy has fully returned. What an amazing feeling to have the energy to do things again and to wake up fully rested! While it was not fun at all, I think somehow my heart needed it. I think I just needed everything to stop for awhile and just be still and rest and recover, not just physically but mentally and emotionally too from the overtaxing the last few years have been. And even before that, too. We went through one of the hardest seasons of our lives in West Virginia before moving back to Montana. Then there was the pandemic and our sudden move to where we are now and the loss of a very important friendship to us. It was all just too much for my heart. Every hard thing isn't without its benefits and the benefit for me in all the sickness was the ability to rest and wrestle through the questions and heartaches of the last few years. I couldn't do much but sit with my thoughts and feelings and acknowledge them and give them to the One who could heal them. I journaled and prayed and blessed and released the ones who had hurt me the most and gave my aching heart the attention it needed. It was a long and difficult process but I have a peace and release that I haven't felt in years.

It felt so nice to start this year fresh with more energy and clarity than I've had in a long time. It was good to rest and pull away for awhile and regain some balance and direction, too. I think I needed to simply be and experience life and exchange the lenses I was viewing everything through. It was nice to live and experience things and just keep them in my heart. I'm a sharer and I love sharing with others but it was good for my heart to turn inward a bit more and keep things to myself and give myself the space to process and live life without sharing or writing about it. I think writing can give clarity and be cathartic in certain seasons and in other seasons thoughts and feelings can be so jumbled that it is overwhelming to try to convey them or explain them to others. I feel like I'm finding my personal equilibrium again and that is such a wonderful feeling! I think the last several years have been a process of disentangling myself from other's voices and opinions which has been so healthy for me. I am trying to figure out how to navigate how and what to integrate back into my life and how to do so in a way that is healthy and wholesome for me and other people.

I think one of the things that has been hard to navigate over the last couple years was just learning how to do everything again in a new place with different priorities and different access to things. My children are all getting older and navigating the change from little ones and toddlers to them all doing school has been good but also a bit more of a transition than I had anticipated. So much of my adult life has been dictated by babies and their needs and it is a whole new world to navigate being able to do more things with them and the training and investing in them has also changed and looked different in this season. Preparing them for adulthood versus potty training and naps. It has shifted routines and priorities a bit in our household and that has been another change to get used to but a very good one.

We have lived here in this tiny town (less than 200 people) for two years now. I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. It will be 3 years next month that we moved back to Montana. It feels both like time is flying by and also like it was so long ago. In many ways I feel like I am still getting my feet underneath me and finding my place and rhythm. I'm not sure if it is age (I entered my 30's in the last couple years) or the quick succession of hard things happening, but I have struggled so much with this move two years ago. I have never walked through a betrayal like that before and it shook me to my core more than I would like to admit. It made me more fearful than I've ever felt, made me turn inward and away from others, made me question everyone's intentions. It was hard to feel like I was a shell of the former person I had been. I seemed to lose my vibrant and confident approach to life. I have dealt with many hard things over the years and I don't expect to live a life without hardship, I have always approached it with pluck and grit and a positive attitude. We have moved many times and started over and I have always looked for the good and beautiful and seen it as a challenge to solve and overcome. There has always been an element of excitement and ingenuity to figuring out life in a new place. This time though, I felt nothing but incredible weariness. I have struggled to make this house a home for the first time. New homes always have their challenges as nothing ever fits quite the same in one house as it does in another, but that was just part of the problems to solve in the past. This time I just didn't know where or how to start in making this house a home, and more than that, I didn't hardly have the energy or capacity to love another home and place to have it taken away again.

I have felt largely adrift the last couple of years. I haven't understood why things happened the way they did and I haven't understood why we are where we are. Not that it is bad, quite the opposite. My husband is in a job he loves, we are more than provided for financially, we have a lovely rental home to live in close to his work, we have a tight-knit church group with love and support unrivaled. I have struggled with discontent more than I ever remember, and again, it's not because things are hard or bad. Quite the opposite, really. I have struggled to enjoy this little town. I have struggled to be ok with where we are at. I have wondered if this is the place/life I would have picked if I could have chosen. This isn't where I saw us or our life playing out. Anyone else wonder these things? I'm not exactly sure what I had in mind but I have felt confident that this wasn't it! :) I have struggled against the life I have for the one I thought I would have. I also have struggled against the fact of starting over again when I think we should be farther along in life than we are. It all just sounds horrid and ungrateful and spoiled but it is how I have felt and no matter how hard I've tried, I couldn't make it not so. I haven't felt like I had much to say these last few months and what I could say didn't seem to be very encouraging or uplifting. So I have been quiet and stopped talking/writing and allowed myself to acknowledge these feelings, to journal them and pray over them and then release them. I'm not sure I'm entirely on the other side of it all but I do feel like I have begun to see the beauty in things again. I feel like I am beginning to have the energy again to invest in life and to live fully where I am instead of where I think I should be or where I would like to be.

In the last few weeks I have felt like some things have come back into proper perspective for me. The Lord placed us here, and not only that but under some pretty amazing circumstances, too. I know without a shadow of a doubt that the Lord brought us here. Does He not know me better than I know myself? Does He not know what I need more than I do? And if this was provision from His hand, who am I to think I need or want something different? He gives good gifts to His children and I need to receive this place, this home, this job, this community, as a gift from His hand. It may not have been what I would choose but I can have confidence that it is what I need. I can embrace this and be thankful and content in His gifts and provision and grow and learn from this because I can have full confidence that this is for my good. Instead of fighting against it or trying to protect myself from another heartache, I can know that He is good, He has always provided for us, He will always be enough, and I can trust Him with our future. My job is to trust, obey, and follow. My job remains the same wherever we live and in whatever circumstance we find ourselves in. I am to make a home for the glory of God, to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, to live sacrificially, to be a helper for my husband. These things remain whether we have enough money or not, whether we rent or own, whether we live in town or the country, whether I am where I think I should be in life or not. I can be faithful, I can be thankful, I can be content. My response should remain the same regardless of life situations.

I have lived life the last couple of years as an outsider, as if all of this would all fall apart at any minute. I have held myself at a distance from friends, I have not wanted to get too attached or involved in our community. I have not wanted to make a home in this rental because it seemed temporary, even though that has never stopped me before. But I have come to realize (again) that life is happening and we are building our life and legacy every day regardless of our situation. It is not something that happens sometime in the future when we arrive at this dream point in our lives: i.e. we own a home, we make more money, we move to land in the country, we graduate, we get a "real" career, etc. This moment in time, right now, right here, is our life. This is our story. This is what we are building. I have spent two years in limbo not intentionally building anything, and you know what? Those years have passed regardless. It has been a sobering reminder to me to not put off our living and our building a life for some future time that seems more stable or more conducive to it. Life is now. Life is a gift. I want to embrace and live it to the fullest. This is a gift straight from my Father's hand. Let me not squander it.

I hope each of you are doing well. Thank you for being patient and walking this journey the last few years with me. I would love to hear from you and see what kind of things you all find encouraging and uplifting and what kind of things you are looking for. I still have very little idea of what to do with this space here and how to best utilize it for other's benefit. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Blessings, Grace