Why do I still feel restless?
I have journaled this question again and again the past few months. What am I missing? Is there more? Is this it? What if all I want is the mediocre life? The mundane? The normal? What if I like the fact that we have the same rhythm and routine day in and day out? Isn’t it beautiful to be able to fix dinner for my husband each night?
So then, why have I had such a hard time letting go? Why does it make me sad when I think of all the places I haven’t been? The trips I didn’t take? The adventures I feel like I missed out on? I lament over the normalcy of this life now. Even though a part of me crave the predictable, the everyday, drinking coffee in the same chair each morning, a part of me also craves the different. The abnormal. The chaos. The crazy.
But if I am honest, I think I am a healthier version of myself right now. I sleep better with my husband by my side. I am less afraid of commitments to friends and church. I actually plan things. I keep a calendar. I have begun to make goals.
I don’t think the place I was in was unhealthy necessarily, I had to learn to be flexible. To roll with the changes and be okay with the unknowns. I was 100% present when my family was together. And 100% counting down the days when we were apart for work.
I am thankful for Jeff’s new job, the balance, the new normal. So why has this been such a hard thing to get used to? Why have I fought so much of it?
Because I am still just passing through. The unsettled nature of having a husband who travels for work, and often traveling with him, was appealing because there was less order to my life. Fewer reminders of the normal things I was missing out on. Fewer decisions had to be made about commitments, the answer was just almost always, no. And I didn’t have to feel guilty or worry, because that was just our life. I didn’t have to watch Thao’s friends grow up or remember the life I wanted so badly. There were definitely days I craved normal. Normal. What was normal? I would never have normal again. My normal was taken from me. My normal was shattered along with the dream of raising my family without too much pain and suffering and loss. My normal, my new normal since Thao died, still doesn’t feel normal.
But maybe it does. Maybe I’m just used to living with this Thao-sized hole in my heart and our family. Maybe the unconventional life of travel we were living was a good distraction, a good break from the cycle of routine that I naturally loved so much.
I am a homebody. Traveling taught me what I already knew, home is where my family is.
So why the restless, wandering heart?
Because we truly are just sojourners. We are not made for this broken world. We crave more. We long for holy. We live for eternal. I have spent the last year seeking the Lord, wanting to be fully satisfied in him and at the same time asking why. Why, Lord? Why Thao? Why didn’t you heal him? Whyyyyyyyyyyy? as I fall to the floor. Why? as I stare out the window at nothing but air. Why? as I tearfully watch my children play. Why? God? Why?
Time is not mine to own. My days are fleeting and soon I too will only be a memory. I will only live at the tip of someone’s tongue, a shadow in their thoughts, a longing for days of old and yet to come. This is why I’m restless. This is home. But this is not.
I cannot think of anywhere I’d rather be than home with my family, wherever that should be.
The stirring never stops though. Because one beautiful soul is missing. Maybe he is the one I am restless for? Maybe this is what grief feels like? Maybe this is the slow dying of ones’ dreams? The reality and permanence of death itself? I sink deep into grief and I fall silent.
I fall silent. My threshold gets lower. I stop. I don’t write or post or spend much time with friends. Because I am grieving. My emotional energy is spent. And I am weary.
That is where I’ve been. Paused, for a lack of a better word. I pushed pause on all the extra things. I wrote small things and survived. I leaned into the Lord, his promises and goodness and kindness. His faithfulness never ceases to amaze me. I leaned into my family and this new lifestyle. The shifting of my mind to things more steadfact and sure and normal. A different rhythm, yet again.
All seasons have been beautiful. Each one I fear and fight the change. Each one has more sweet memories to treasure. Each one has new adventures of its own. Each season has a purpose, lessons to be learned and gifts to be shared. Even though it is still winter here, it’s beginning to feel like spring in my soul.
I don’t know what the new year brings, but I know that I am home, for now. Sojourners wandered home, for a bit. Pointed toward Home.
This new adventure is more rooted. It requires me to be more disciplined and live a little more normal. There’s beauty here, in the normal, everyday. There’s beauty in watching the trees change for each season. There’s beauty in watching birds at my bird feeders each day. And homeschooling from our very own table in our very own home every single week. And eating together around the table each evening.
Photo credit: Bethany Burt
I don’t know what this year will bring. I’d like to think it will be preditable and normal and nothing big will change. That we will plant a garden and watch it grow. That we will get goats and go camping and hiking and build deeper relationships within our community. I’d like to think I can make a plan and set goals and have them actually come to fruition. That nothing will take me by surprise and there will be no more shifts in my soul.
But this, too, is just a season. Because life is full of seasons and seasons always change. And we change with them, sway in the wind. We are here to glorify God, to love well and live well with this one life we are given. But this is not our forever home. We are sojourners, passing through until Eternity. Wandering in the desert, climbing the mountains and finding ourselves in valleys deep as grieving a child. We are living in the in between. Between heaven and earth, the past and the future. It’s adventurous and ordinary. It’s full of joy and full of grief. It’s sorrowful and beautiful. And we get one chance to do it well.
Here’s to a year of adventures in normalcy. With all the ups and downs, the rejoicing and the suffering. And the steadfast love of the Lord.
“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good? Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. For the Lordyour God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.”
Deuteronomy 10:12-22