Spring is upon us here in Massachusetts, and I couldn't be more excited about it. Good old Mother Nature treated us to a snow storm yesterday, but as I stare out the window now, almost all of the 4-5 inches we got are melted already. We are seeing green sprout up from the ground and the sun is feeling warmer and warmer every single day. I'm so ready to be able to explore the great outdoors - without having to bundle up.
We are really loving living here ... and can't imagine ever moving back to GA - but there are still days when I feel really lonely. I was talking with another older woman on Sunday who moved her family a across few states when she was my age. She said she remembers feeling so isolated, like a trip to the grocery store was so important to her because she actually saw people - real live adults - there. I nodded my head in agreement. Some weeks I'm lucky if I see a real live adult other than my husband. I didn't realize how connected to people we were in Atlanta, until we moved here and became so disconnected.
We try to have a play date once a week with a family from church, but we had a week of sickness, a week of visitors, another week of sickness, and now they have a visitor, so we've only seen them a couple of times this month. And although we've found a church to call home, we have found it very hard to plugin to do anything more than Sunday worship.
And if we are really honest with ourselves, more often than not, it still feels like we're wandering. We have been here almost four months now, but we are only slightly more settled. Admittedly, those four months have been packed full of (mostly negative) excitement and transitions. We have one more planned transition - the move to our house in May - and then I told my husband I don't want to ever move again. We are hoping that once we move in, we will start to feel like this is it. Like we've planted our roots and are ready to grow and flourish. We can plant flowers - and vegetables - and we'll have an outdoor space to call our own. We spent so much time in our outdoor space in Grant Park, and are really looking forward to having a yard that will allow us to spend a lot of time outside. A friend of mine in Atlanta told me once you have owned your own space, going back to renting is so difficult - and that has been so true for us here.
I have a framed watercolor print hanging above my desk with a quote from Sarah Bessey's latest book that says,
God is here in the wandering.
It's my reminder that no matter how isolated we feel, God is there. A reminder that we will not be wandering forever - or at least not in the same sense of being "between homes." A reminder that God is providing for us - every single step of the way.