TRUST

For the last many years I have had a word for the year. Some I chose, and some chose me. This year that word is 'trust', and it definitely chose me because frankly, I don’t want it.

As anyone who knows me will attest, I dislike change. Even other people’s change makes me twitchy. This last 18 months I’ve experienced more change than should be allowed and I’m a bit weary from it. And yet I know there is much more coming. It is the stage of life I’m in and it cannot be avoided no matter how much I might wish it so.

My job over the last 26, almost 27 years, has been to be the best wife and mother I could possible be. I stayed home with the kids. I cooked the meals. I washed the clothes. I kept the house. I homeschooled the kids. I taught at the co op. I drove the kids to all the things until they could drive themselves, and then I sat up to make sure they made it home okay. I listened and supported as my husband’s job ebbed and flowed.

I loved it. It is what I wanted to do. It made me happy. All I ever wanted to be when I grew up was a wife and a mom. I was never ambitious. I know that is not very PC these days, but it’s the truth. I loved every minute. There were some hard bits, some really hard bits; I don’t want to sound too Pollyanna. Life can be rough. But even in those hard bits, I never felt like I should be doing something else.

So here I find myself after almost 27 years, in a weird place. I’ve written about it before, this In Between place. The kids are either off on their own or almost so. Dave is driving over an hour to work and back every day in traffic. The time has come for a change. A move.

We need to move closer to Dave’s job, but the kid’s lives are here. So sometime in the next year or so we will be moving, probably to the other side of DFW and this time, this move, will be without the kids. I can hardly wrap my head around that. Dave and I will be choosing a home based on what we need and want and not on how it will best fit the family. It feels so odd.

The girls may come with us on this move depending on where we end up and what they are doing at that time, but even if they do move with us it will only be for a little while. They are standing on the edge of the nest, wings outstretched. They will be jumping at any moment.

I don’t mean to sound overly dramatic but I just can’t seem to get my head around what I’m supposed to do now. My health is not such that I can jump back into a career. (I hate this fact. I hate this stupid autoimmune disorder that causes me chronic pain so much, but it is what it is and I don’t have the extra energy to spend fighting this reality. I have made peace with it and I try to live within its confines to the best of my ability.)

As 2017 came to a close with all these things swirling in my head, I kept hearing the word ‘trust’ in my spirit. And any time I hear the word ‘trust’ my mind immediately goes to the verse ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your path.’ Proverbs 3:5-6

It is like He is reminding me to trust Him. That just because my kids are no longer living in my home does not make me no longer a mom. Just a different kind of mom. My work is not finished, just changing. And the biggest thing He is whispering to my spirit is that change is not always bad. Sometime change can be good.

So here I sit, at the beginning of 2018, Trusting God, leaning not on my own understanding, acknowledging Him as the creator of my world and the lover of my soul, and TRUSTING that he will make straight this path into a strange and unknown future.