Re-entry has been filled first with
refinishing the old apartment with new surfaces floor to ceiling and hardware
in every room (We only got our fridge delivered a few weeks ago) then the
fullness of Christmas and New Year with family and churches, and kids
birthdays, and then Jim’s big knee replacement mid January. So much work in
those early weeks just keeping ice around the house! So, too busy to think
about re-entry!
I have learned over the years what I
need for my mental health in transition (well, always!): that I need to be
connected regularly with women, and creative friends…so I signed up right away
for a weekly group of women, and am making sure that more than once a week I am
socially getting together with creative people or women.
And I need to keep the music on and
dive into some kind of creative project. I borrowed a guitar (for JIM) and have
started toughening up my fingertips for the first time in more than 30 years,
learning a song a week is my goal.
I also have the continued longing to
put roots down, and a persistent disconnect that in my physical life I cannot.
Our 14 months in Malaysia I started a raised garden on my rooftop patio and
found it immensely satisfying to grow vegetables…so with my February birthday
money I bought pots and potting soil and some seeds and starter plants. I tell
people it is a spiritual exercise that symbolically represents my physical
life... to garden… I tell the Lord how much I REALLY want to plant a fruit
bearing tree that takes YEARS of cultivation to bear fruit, I want to put roots
down DEEP. God instead says, “Here, how about these zucchini’s and summer
squash? Loads of yield in only a couple months of nurture.”
So I’m keeping my eyes, ears and
heart open for God’s orchestration of who is initiating and comes on the radar
and what kinds of ministry can be fruitful no matter if I’m only here for a few
months…a year. … I feel in some ways like a gardener/anthropologist. Maybe I’ll
get some new business cards made with that title!
