Surprises, 1/12/2010

Surprises, 1/12/2010

First surprise, it’s 9:30 a.m. Tuesday morning and everyone is still asleep!

I woke up at 7 a.m., drank some water, put some kitchen stuff away, threw away some old stuff, organized and swept a little. By that time it was 8 a.m. and still, no noises from upstairs. I woke Kyler up to feed him (his last feeding had been at 11 p.m.). He was happy and content, full of lots of things to tell me as he watched me from his bouncy seat. I think he’s glad to be home too. 45 minutes later he is down for a nap, I’ve had a cup of coffee and muffin (made by one of my fabulous friends here…I noticed the muffins have cranraisins in them maybe? Somebody loves me to spare their cranraisins on someone who just indulged in lots of American food!), read some Psalms and James, and did some praying.

Which leads to surprise number 2. This feeling of love for this place! Not sure why I am so surprised by it…but sitting here amongst the chaos of my house (after Jon unpacked all the crates last night and made piles, he’s amazing) I feel this joy and love for life here. I felt the same joy and love waking up in America 3 months ago. But I am appreciating different things. For example, the sounds of Epiphany (what we call our city since we don’t use the real name in America) that I woke up to this morning are so different from America but so familiar now. There is a slowness in the sounds…a slow-paced lifestyle, not a lot of hustle and bustle. It sounds crisp and natural. The call to prayer reminded me again of the freedom we live in through Christ. It’s not taken for granted for me here. That feeling was easily lost when I was in America. Yet in America I felt surrounded by faithful followers. Here you fight for that.

Suprpise number 3. The ants in the kitchen aren’t making me want to cuss and throw things! Something about seeing them made me feel at home instead! Weird!! I kind of feel like an adult again, a little more in control of my life. I didn’t realize I felt like such a “kid” again being around parents and siblings. Nor did I realize how out of control I felt living out of a suitcase for 3 months. Here I feel purposeful sitting in my home that is my job to keep running smoothly (schedules, cooking, cleaning, organizing, raising kids). I feel older here, more responsibility. But that is probably b/c we actually live here. In America we were living it up on good food, someone else was ultimately responsible for the house we were staying in, and it wasn’t really my job to cook and clean! Thanks Mom and Lorie for doing all that for us!! Now that I am here, I really do feel like I had a vacation from my “life”. When do moms ever get that kind of vacation?! Sorry, friends, wish you all could have one too!

Surprise number 4: Everything made it! Nothing broke! The worst thing that happened was one of my spaghetti sauce seasoning packets got a little tear it in, but it was contained in it’s ziplocked bag and the crate that was sitting on the floor thru the night must be on a hot water line (which heats our house) b/c when I unpacked my bags of chocolate chips 2 of them were melted and hot!

Surprise number 5. I’ve blogged twice since being back and it’s only been 10 hours! And everyone is still sleeping at 10 a.m.!!