a new era welcomed

The winds of change are coming.  I can feel them.  Transition into a new season for our family.

No more elementary school.  No more need for babysitters. The boy has a J O B for goodness sake!

Wonderteen will be a Junior.  11th grade.  Amazing to think my tiny little pumpkin head has grown into such an amazing and beautiful young woman.

Mr and I are entering into a new era.  Older kids.  More freedom to be spontaneously social and building a new core of relationships.  Our marriage continually growing stronger....and in a way makes me laugh at how we've grown into this beautiful relationship that also mimics the intensity of young love.  We often tease our daughter and her boyfriend about that high school love where things are so intense you immediately miss each other when out of sight.  Time apart can be crushing.  Oh the days of young overwhelming love! ...and we discuss on a fairly regular basis how wonderful retirement will be when we can be together all the time or his regular comment that if only we could win the lottery so he could be home with me everyday.  The million times we say I love you, sometimes less than 5 minutes apart...yes, that is our truth.  We are silly, cavity inducing, head over heels crazy for each other.  And we don't care how many times people tell us to get a room. Our affection is not hidden, nor excessive.  We keep it G people....maybe PG sometimes. :)

In this new era the trappings of formal ministry obligations have been thrown off.  The kind that tie you to a place, time and topic.  Nothing wrong with them, I'm not being critical of formal ministry.  As I've gotten older I have become more and more aware that I am personally in a constant state of ministry.  Some refer to my maternal nature with those around me.  It brings me to minister to whomever is in front of me at the time.  It isn't conscious or premeditated.....it is simply how He has grown me, wired me.  Formal ministry wears on me more quickly than I'd like to admit because of this.  My ministry is my family, my home and whomever may be placed in my path.  Facebook is so trivialized but I have spent more time ministering to people on there than you may believe.  I minister via email and kitchen door.  Yes, I have a young man who just shows up at my kitchen door, unannounced and just to talk.  He is 20 years old now, he calls me mom and has been showing up for several years.

Perhaps is the natural growth of being in the second half of my 30's.  Or maybe it's that I'm in a season in life more typical for one in their 40's. Maybe it's my confidence coming forward with over 30lbs shed.  Either way I feel a new settling in myself.  A disinterest to please simply for the sake of keeping others happy or not tarnishing someones view of me.  Who they think I am does not make me who I am....anymore.  Its a lovely freedom.

I will probably always be a one track person.  Whatever current focus will probably always be THE big deal until it isn't anymore.
I am not a crafty person.  I won't pick up scrap booking or stamping.  I am capable of crafts but that does not make me crafty.
My kids school work will still be mostly thrown in the trash.  Because who really looks at their spelling tests from 4th grade?  This isn't a treasure to me.  Exceptional works of art from them, yes.  Essays that depict who they are or their unique point of view at the time, those are things I will keep for them.  The funny, the deep, the personal, the beautiful.  Perhaps that's cold.  Though I take great pride in watching my 11 year old purge objects more efficiently than any adult I know because he doesn't form deep emotional connections to objects.  He loves people and that is where love should go.
I'll always have a horribly immature sense of humor.  And that is okay.
I'll always be strong and stable.
I'll always have a heart that breaks easily.
I'll always be a homebody who loves, loves, loves solitude and quiet.
I'll always be passionate about the truth but frustratingly calm and non-argumentative.
I will always care about doing what is right more than what is popular.
I will always be trying to grow and improve and learn about something.

There is unknown on the horizon but it's not scary.  The Lord always has a plan and it is always amazing.  The only plan I have is to try and walk through it with as much joy and grace as I can, no matter how things feel.  Feelings are deceiving and often not rooted in truth.  A fact that is hard to remember when we are in the middle of them but it is something good to remember.

It's been a good couple weeks here.  Lots of fun, lots of crazy and lots of me remembering how every summer I think I'm going to accomplish SO much and never do because I simply can't get it done while my kids are home.  They want attention and talk time or maybe just hanging out not talking time.  If that is what they need then that is what I try to give them, with measures of work in between.  The school year is my most productive home keeping season.  This year I hate to say even the garden has not been tended to the way it deserves.  It has been a disgustingly hot and humid summer though.....I have not wanted to even venture out there.

Time to get some work done.  This is the last week of summer school and Wonderteen is off on a trip with her mom and girl scout troop this week.  My last week of any alone time.  I want to make the most of it!

Blessings of peace and calm to welcome whatever new era comes to greet you.
the Mrs.