Coffee Chat: Pondering the Days Behind and Ahead

Fear not dear friends, I shall indeed be sharing all about the usual household/financial things here shortly...but for this moment welcome to another somber post, at least here at the beginning.  Why so somber?  Because it is the last weekend that this family will live in my home.  Tomorrow night they shall take shelter in their own walls and I shall be as alone as I haven't been in many and many a month now.



John is feeling nostalgic.   He always does, great sentimentalist  that he is.  Odd that we share a birth month and are just one day apart in our actual birth date and yet we are so very unalike in so very many ways.   I suppose anyone with a true understanding of stars and planets would say that it's all clear as the night sky based on birth place and time, etc.  Long ago, in my teens I dabbled at the study of astrology enough to know theories but dropped it when it got too technical and too full of charting this and understanding that...and somehow I never cared enough to delve deeply.  As though it never really accounted for much anyway.

So John sat down this evening and asked, as the two of us sat quietly together in the kitchen sitting area, now sporting two chairs because Isaac decided that the ladylike chair in the corner near the tv was perfectly wonderful for reaching the television, dvd player and the mantel which has never been properly attached to the wall but is propped and held in place by the weight of the things resting upon it.  I was basking in the sunlight coming in the windows.  We were freshly roused from two exhausted naps, awaiting the warning sounds of wide awake little boys in the music room, "Will you miss this?"  I had been flicking mindlessly through Pinterest reading quotes about self worth and valuing one's time and such.  I looked at him with a blank face.  "Won't you miss any of this at all." he asked?

I felt ashamed as I looked at him.  I thought of seeing Isaac's first steps and his ever increasing agility and skill in movement and expressing himself.  I thought of Josh's ecstatic greeting of me each morning and his outburst of joy when I returned from Jd's and his wonderfully intelligent questions about what big words mean and why things work as they do and how the letter 'l' is a struggle in his mouth at present . I thought of how Bess almost always has a fresh pot of coffee going for me in the early morning and our attempts to chat over cups of coffee while the boys run wild every morning and of Sam's desire to share some of our shared interests in viewing British tv programs.

I also thought of how very tired I was still, even though we'd napped nearly as long as the boys had.  I thought of the supper to come for which I had made no plans at all and the meals I must make tomorrow for which I have no  plans, either.  I thought of how very dirty my house is and how deeply it needs to be cleaned.  I thought of the conversations that John and I have had interrupted time and again and conversations with others that revealed certain assumptions I'd had no idea I would be expected to fulfill.  I thought with longing of how a hot, really hot, cup of coffee used to be savored and now I gulp it down either boiling or lukewarm but never at that just right point.  I thought of the nightly struggle over Josh's eating that has made me dread dinners almost as much as I dreaded my childhood table due to the fussing that goes on throughout the meal.  I thought of the Shabats we used to enjoy where we ended the day rested and restless, and not become ever more weary than the week days left us.  I thought of all the things unrelated to living with others that had happened over the last few months and the expectations that fell upon my own shoulders and every failing of mine in meeting needs gracefully and gratefully and felt tears well into my eyes.

The truth is, blessing that I know this time has been  in some ways,  I am tired and weary and I want above all else to really  rest and experience quiet and peace and a break from the expectations of others, and most of all my own expectations, upon myself that are seldom met.  I want a quiet coffee chat, that perfect cup of  coffee just hot enough to warm through, with  a group of friends and not sound like a whining, weeping, selfish mess while doing so.  I want to have more than one conversation with John each week  where we are not interrupted nor consumed with upset over what others are doing/not doing and how it shall affect our routines and finances and lives.  I want this season to be done.  Period.

Anyone want to guess who forgot her anti-anxiety pill this afternoon?   Could it be the sniffling sob sister on the other side of this screen?

I ruefully recall the word I felt God place in my spirit back in March when all this season was just beginning.  I'd been praying, asking about a certain matter and whether or not we should increase in that area and I felt strongly that we were going to be in a period of revelation worthy giving during the year ahead.   I took God at his word...And it has been a revelation time for sure!   Not the wonderful sort of revelations I'd imagined where blessings poured, light shone from heaven, the voice of God whispering gentle and beautiful understanding of passages into my ears.  I told John that thus far the revelations I've received in this  season are not particularly flattering to myself, nor to a few others.  We've not taken the hard things and steadfastly proceeded onward but stood in the middle of the lane bleating and doing nothing much but blocking the path.  It's also revealed that the true gems amongst us did the least complaining...

Well the path ends here.  Tomorrow night the family will be in their own home and on their own once again and John and I shall, without hardly a pause, begin to remove, repair, replace, and restore our home all while watching for whatever new routines we must incorporate into our lives.

All the while I've been struggling to coherently write these words I've listened to Isaac yodeling away in the nursery formerly known as John's music room because he was too warm and had tossed his favorite blanket and pacifier and teddy bear over the edge of the bed and his diaper was too full for comfort.  I attended to his needs and realized that I shall miss little boys who run for sheer joy that it is morning and who laugh out loud when Grampa tests to see if they are in tune by patting their bellies like drums and  who ask Gramma to kiss the boo boos and make them better, who whisper good nights and giggle because they have stripped to their underpants to sleep.  I shall truly miss it but be so very glad to see it come to an end and be an occasional thing and not a daily routine.  It makes no sense at all, not one moment of any of this crazy mixed up season, but it's all truth.  It's been sweet and bitter and it's been blessed and difficult.

My only question is this:  What exactly will normal look like now?  Because the old normal has been well and truly put aside.   I've been shaken too hard and pressed harder and  what has sloshed out has proven there's places to be filled, hopefully with something far better than what got lost.  So just what lies ahead?  And there my dears, is the one thing I cannot know until it has revealed itself.  Oh the problems and promises of a Revelation year!