All of us in the middle, with a chasm between.

We’re now in the middle of our move. Half of us are here in Southern California and half of us are still back in Michigan. The half of us living in LA is hanging out in a Residence Inn and managing lots of new-life, people who don’t know us, or no people at all. The two of us still in Michigan are dealing with packing and wrapping up and really hard hours of saying stretched-out good-byes.

Somehow we all wish we were on the other side; the other side of this really hard transition. Leaving worlds we enjoyed, learning to leap, reaching out, and trying out for teams. One day we’re discouraged and the next, we’re pointed toward hope and amazing joy.  In all the trying outs there have been great discoveries and there have also been jabs of disappointment.

We know in a life entrusted to God, every experience has purpose, and we will understand the purpose in each disappointment … later. Today’s disappointment will lead to a miracle we can’t see yet. We know this in our heart. But for today we can be bummed. We know that God’s plan is better than we can imagine. But we can let our hurts process somewhere inside our gut. Then we turn to hope. We trust in truth, and our heart is softened and nourished.

When it’s my kid who’s hurting, it’s hard to navigate and I couldn’t do it well without Divine help. Our empathetic pain for our children is real even though we are able to see a teensy bit farther into Hope.  We want to help more.

But I’ve learned that it’s in the processing of the pain that they’ll learn where to find hope and faith. It’s precisely the love she will feel from God, directly through her own dialogue that will equip her for the next step in her journey.

I choose soft silence, a simple prayer, a funny TV show, and a plan for more adventure tomorrow.