I love Fall. Its my favorite time of year. Well, at least it used to be... back when we lived in a place where the season actually existed. Lately I've been wondering if this is all really worth it.... living so far away from family. Sean's grandma is really sick and probably won't make it through the week... of course we won't be able to go to her funeral. This is especially hard because she is Sean's maternal grandma... his mom's mom. Losing her is losing another link to Jill. (Sean's mom) I hate that we haven't seen Grandma since we went to Grandpa's funeral last summer. I hate that before his funeral, we hadn't seen Grandpa since... well, who knows when.
My mom leaves on Monday for Egypt. I hate that we won't be in Tulsa to see her off. My brother is at school in Chicago, and probably feeling really on his own right now. I hate that we're not close enough to drive to see him. (Even a 10 or 12 hour drive would be great.) My sister is the closest in Arizona (about 10 hours away), but with both Sean and I having to work (thank-you over-inflated California) we haven't been to see her in the 2 years we've lived here.
My brother in law is getting married in November. I am so thankful that we will get to be there for that, but am really saddened that we won't get to be there in the time before or after it. (Like next weekend, for their wedding shower.) We're bringing a little one into the world... but will he/she even know his/her grandparents? Aunts & Uncles? Cousins? Or will they just be people in pictures, who they see every few years?
I know I am being whiney and I know that there are people who live much farther from their families than we do, but this is my blog. :-)
Its really not like we are doing anything here that we couldn't be doing in Cincinnati... or somewhere around there at least. So is it really worth it? I really don't think it is. At least that's what I initially answer. But then I have to force myself to think of the path that brought us here to where we are at... and I realize that it was a path completely laid out by God... LONG before we ever even thought about it. I have to find humor in the fact that I always said I never wanted to live in California or raise my children there. ha. If there's anything I've learned about going where God sends you, it is this: if you can see some kind of irony or God-like humor about where you are or where He's leading... you're probably in the right place. So while I don't completly know why the heck He is keeping us here or what we're really doing here, I just have to keep going back to the choice we made 2 years ago. We were so certain that it was His leading. And I draw my strength from the truth that God will not abandon us mid-course... he is always with us.
In other news... How's your B90X reading going? It amazes me some of the things that are in the Bible. It is also amazing to me how when I read multiple chapters and books in a matter of days, there is such continuity to the whole thing... I haven't gotten a chance to write about when Bob Sjogren was at our church a few weeks ago, but the whole point of his message was that the Bible is meant to be one continous book with on clear theme: God's heart for the Nations.
In baby news, we're doing good... went to the dr. last week and he/she had doubled in size in just the two weeks between appointments. I am hungry all the time but also nauseaus and sicky, too. But I'm trying to take that as a good sign that baby is growing!
