It’s hard to go backward, and sometimes hard to go onward. But hard is not the same thing as bad. Then I wonder, is onward the same as forward? Perhaps it isn’t directional, but only moving. All directions at once might even be possible.
This is the simple-yet-complicated way I am envisioning the most recent path of my life. 3 1/2 years ago my husband and I made a decision to move our family away from the only place my children had known as home. We moved to Idaho, built a new house, planted new roots, and have spent the time since moving onward.
When we built our first house we had one son with another on the way. We were barely beginning our family story. We didn’t even know if the Lord would give us children to fill those rooms. (Spoiler alert: He did.)
Then over a decade later, we built our second house when our last child was already four years old. We knew the number of children who needed bedrooms. We anticipate children leaving this home, but not adding to it in the same way. This, Lord willing, is the home from which our children will pull up their roots to go be planted elsewhere. Then their own olive shoots can come here for sleepovers and playdates and craft times and Sabbath dinners.
I now know what it is to move, to remake, to start again – to be potted up and then replanted. Like the peony I dug out of my old front yard, put in a huge pot for eighteens months, and finally replanted here in my new front yard. It survived. It thrives!
Sometimes the best decisions are still painful. Tearing up roots is not easy, in fact it’s messy. I wanted to live where we now live, but the process of moving still actually ripped me up. I cried every day for a year. It surprised me when I finally realized I wasn’t crying every day anymore. I was continuing onward.
My children are no longer small. I have an adult son who finished high school homeschooling & doing dual credit at a university, and now that he’s graduated he works full time and is beginning to create his own life in new ways. He is a wonderful young man, and I can’t believe the Lord let me have him for eighteen years in my home, knitted in my heart. I have two more teens in high school now – I still technically homeschool them, but it’s more like I coach and encourage and taxi them around. They are masters of their own schedules, taking responsibility for their commitments and their educations and their work. They are in two co ops + university dual enrollment for one, they have music lessons and sports, they are entirely social and cheerful and thoughtful young people. Their favorite thing is to walk next door to see my parents in the evening and wander back through the woods in the dark together even after I’ve already gone to bed (I’ve become an early bird).
And yes, my parents live next door to us again. Through the woods again. Because my Father in heaven cares about the details and He loves us so intimately.
My two “little boys” are only so little at this point, but I still use the moniker. Perhaps I always will. The way I still call my daughter “dolly” sometimes under my breath and my husband refers to her as “my girl.” The boys are ten and seven, full of spunk and energy. Their best friends are their grandparents and great-grandma. They spend every spare moment with those wise old oaks because deep in their bones they know there is nothing better than to put yourself in the way of wisdom.
Still we do math together, and we sing around the table, and we sketch and diagram sentences and recite catechism. We read good books and talk about scientific principles. They practice piano in the family room and rugby in the front yard. They are the sons of my old age. I can’t keep up with them anymore, but they pull me along. That’s the way the Lord has made the world.
Someone asked me recently if I still blogged. I chuckled. I couldn’t even access my blog if I wanted to, because my password didn’t work and the login said my email address was incorrect. But my husband fixed it. So here I am. Not in the same place, in any sense of the phrase. Not in the same house or town. Not in the same phase of education or motherhood. Even my own physical body is not the same it was. I have continued onward.
Onward into greyer hair, settled hips, wrinkled brow. Onward into fewer children in my care. Onward into a quieter, more settled wisdom where words are more measured, few. Onward into a life where we are no longer pulling a wagon up a hill on our own, but now shoulder to shoulder with so many likeminded, joyful, industrious people. And my own children, two now towering over me, are shoulder to shoulder with us as well. What a gift.
What else is new? Kittens, on repeat. And sourdough. Early mornings at the gym. Being only ten minutes from town instead of forty.
What is the same? My love, my allegiance, my faith, my people. What really matters is unchanged. Because the Lord is good. So, so good.