But Everyone is Leaving!

(Drafted in May, published in August 2014)

I have written 50,000 blog posts in my mind during the months that you have seen nothing published on my blog site.  Today, however, I am feeling that I will burst open at the seams if I don't write this and publish it as a therapeutic gesture!  Being part of the military family is both an adventure and a harrowing ride!  You spend a number of months, when it comes time to make a change, of living in flux that you yourself cannot control.  While you are living in this "valley of someone else's decision," the people with whom you have gotten really close in the vast scope of faceless others living on and around the base are getting orders and the "hail and farewells" begin!

 I feel alone in a crowd. I feel held in suspended space while everyone around me is spinning around bumping unto each other!

The sun is beaming outside, and if you know anything about the Seattle area, you know that more times than not it is raining!  As I prepared our juice for the morning, my husband and I watched a Allied moving truck, two times the width of our house, maneuver it's way in front of the house next door.  We are saying goodbye to the precious little couple and their little boy next door as they move off to San Antonio and forever sun.  In a few short days, our neighbors next door will be in the same position as they move their furniture to a bigger house a few streets away in preparation for the new baby who will be added to their family of three.  This along with recognition and goodbyes to all of the PCSers (for non military, this means Permanent Change of duty Station--the irony being on the word permanent) at PWOC (Protestant Women of the Chapel) yesterday produced my "being all alone on an island" feeling.

Many of those whom we recognized yesterday, in addition to the many more who were not there, are Chaplain's wives.  That is significant for many reasons.  The first reason is because my husband is a Chaplain, and it is with these women that I have attended coffees or learned to make bread in the home of our Senior Chaplain of the Post wife's home, or prayed together over one of our Chaplain spouses who was diagnosed with cancer.  Secondly, within our own SF Group this summer, three Chaplains will be covering down for what would normally be six positions.  What a hole to fill!

In civilian life, I have had friends move away;  in military life, I have had many friends move away all within days or months of each other!  That may be the harrowing ride of the military, but I readily acknowledge that the spouse of a frequently deployed Soldier may have many things to add to the dark side other than moving friends.


The adventure of all of this is that I am constantly meeting new people and making lifelong friends that I would have missed had we lived in our small town in mid- America.  I would not have experienced living in the Pacific Northwest or in the Mid West or where ever else The Lord and the military sends us had we not been part of this family of people.  I would not have pushed myself to engage in classes like water aerobics or yoga, or in community choir performances, or in spouse events requiring total foolishness on my part, or to help my husband meet needs of fellow Soldiers who need some encouraging words or home cooked meals!  The sun is shining, and my heart is at rest as I trust God to lead us and plug the lonely holes in our hearts.

The Blessings of Christmas 2013

Rather than beat myself up for not keeping my goal of blogging often, let me just concisely excuse myself by the following:  Life Happens!  We have spent our first Thanksgiving away from at least some of our biological family and friends and have adopted or been adopted by another couple of families.  We meshed our holiday traditions together--including those from Boston, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Germany-- and the end result was quite nice.  Since then, my husband surprised me by having our daughter and son-in-law to secretly fly across country from Orlando, Florida, and after giving me a fake reason for going out, drove to our airport, picked them up, re-entered the house to go upstairs and three minutes later had them to knock wildly at our front door!  Have you ever been so surprised that you can't get coherent thoughts to come to the front and usher sensible words out of your mouth?  That was exactly what I felt when I opened that door to see my daughter's sweet, laughing face and Philip's "Grizzly Adams'" look beside her as we swept each other into bear hugs.  We spent from Friday evening to almost a half day of Monday reconnecting and engaging in new adventures!  The Christmas season began with this visit!

Since that weekend, buying and mailing presents for family and friends have been the main focus.  (My tip for myself, in the event we do not get to be at home again next year, is to again start early and bypass any shipping companies other than the postal service, specifically parcel post, unless I am mailing an elephant!)  Roy and I finished it all in time to entertain a military group for lunch, attend a military ball, and fly to Phoenix for 7 days of relaxation and adventure.  The Christmas spirit still pervades our diminished family--Roy, myself and our two furry babies Huck and Finn--as we are currently at this point in our Christmas blessings.

Christmas Day arrives in five days;  we will open a few gifts and turn our sights to the week after the new year when our sweet boy arrives for a week of visiting and major playing with Huck and Finn.  We do and will consider ourselves blessed beyond measure as the 2013 Christmas season ends, and I will turn my eyes to March/April when I once more see my babies in person (hopefully, this time Thanh, Phal and the grandbabies also)!  Life continues to move on, and we are very aware of being in the center of God's Will as we enjoy peace that can only come from the Lord and trust Him to take care of us all.

These boots were made for walking in Washington! I just didn't know it!

I heard it not once, not twice, but three times this morning from well-wishers at the new church we attended:  "Welcome.  You have arrived just in time for the rainy season!"

Two whole years ago, my daughter Rachel gave me these rainboots for Christmas.  I thought they were so cute;  afterall, they are black/white/fuschia!  I wore them a couple of times in Kentucky, took them to Indiana where I wore them to a friend's house--in the snow, not rain (chuckle)--but I could never possibly have known two years back that I would be moving to the rain capital of the USA!  I had been  asked over and over by various people prior to our move, "You do know that it rains a lot in Washington, don't you?"  And they usually followed up with the observation that many people are depressed by the rainy weather.  Yep, that bit of info puts a black cloud over the situation!

While I always answered, "Yes, that is what I have heard," I'm not sure that I had thought of all that would mean to me.  For instance, when I walk out of my garage door, there is a wall of rain which leaves a constant puddle on our garage floor.  I walk Huck and Finn (unless Roy walks them) two times every day!  Finn could care less if it is raining!  Huck is Cooper II (Rachel's dog--our grand dog) and is miserable when he gets rained on.  Also, I can never get my windshield wipers to be at the correct speed, requiring constant adjustment on my part.  On the other hand, I love cuddling up in a chair with a good book while it is raining outside.  I love being in Starbucks all warm and cosy with a Chia latte in hand and the rain pouring down outside!  Falling rain brings to the surface one of my most cherished memories--being at my grandmother's house upstairs under a tin roof with the constant drumming of a steady rain (reading or sleeping or spending time with my cousins).  Walking in the rain, even if I do have to drag Huck for the first half of the block, is refreshing as I trod on newly washed sidewalks, smell the indescribable yet easily identified smell of fresh rain,  and listen to the comforting dripping leaves and reminds me of the one my favorite poems "I saw God wash the world last night and hang it out to dry."http://stidger.com/poetry.jsp?poem=wash

May I bring your thoughts back to the fact that I have had these rain boots two years?  The most awesome thing about those rain boots and the rainy weather here is that God knew my need before even I did!  I can hear some of you thinking aloud "Yeah, right!  You said Rachel bought them for you!  You are making something out of nothing!"  Perhaps, I am. . . the same way I am when I see that God provided a house for us before we arrived because He knew that Roy and I might fall apart if we had to unload the truck into a storage unit and then in a few days move it again to a house as this move would have been the fourth major moving of furniture for us in 2013. . . the same way 4-5 men showed up at our house the day of our move and had our things in the appropriate rooms in an hour and a half (thanks to one of the CA's prompting) . . . and the same way that God used our property manager to find us a washer, dryer, lawn mower and weedeater and I could go on and on and on. . . the fact remains that God uses people and events to meet our needs even before we are aware of having them!

"My Jesus knows just what I need 

Oh yes! He knows just what I need 

He satisfies and every need supplies 

Yes, He knows just what I need "   --written by Pierre Walker and sung by Elvis Presley