Pregnant with #3? Food allergies? Crazy preschooler antics? Trying to sell a house? Pending move? Husband leaving his job? Husband starting seminary? No clue where living expenses will be coming from? Moving? New beginnings?????
Ahhh, there it is. New Beginnings.
While laying in bed the other night, freakin EXHAUSTED, but unable to fall asleep for hours-literally- I began to wonder when our new 'normal' would start to feel 'normal'. It's been nearly 19 months since Jason got hurt. I remember then thinking to myself, since we had been down the road of a severe back injury 5 years before, "Okay self. You've done this before. It's long. It can be crummy. However Kailynn might think it's really fun to paint daddy's toenails blue (something that may have taken place last time) and eight months (the length of Jason's previous recover period) isn't forever, right? Self?? SELF?? Where did you go.....
After, I don't know, maybe week 18-yes I really started to look at it like pregnancy-when the doctors started pushing back follow up appointments from 1 month to 6 weeks to 2 months, with a nursing 5 month old who would not take a bottle (she was 6 weeks old when he got hurt), a 2.5 year old who was PISSED that not only was she having to share her momma with a new baby sister, but her daddy, too, and a chronic pain enduring spouse on my hands, I wasn't so sure that I was equipped to handle any of this forever. Once again 'self' had left the building.
I knew, even then, that everything that was going on around me just couldn't be 'it'. That all the craziness and emptiness and distance and tears that we experienced, individually and as a family, on an almost daily basis was not the new norm for the Goot fam. And I was right.
Even the suckiest, yes that is a word, of moments were all a part of a plan. A much bigger plan than any of us knew while we were fighting through the storm. When you've weathered a storm and come out not just standing, but actually laughing and dancing when the rain has cleared, you know that life is good. HE is good.
Ecclesiastes 3:9-14 reads:
"What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity on the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil-this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him."
Has this family toiled? Um, yeah. But man-o-man is our life so much more beautiful now that it ever would have or could have been without all that toil. We never knew that a life filled with much less, could be much more. That is a gift.
So here we are. Filled to the brim with 'new beginnings'! I'll be blogging for weeks :o)
Blessings and Grace
