good to be gone, good to be home
Months ago we began working on a new staircase – tearing out old boards and putting in new ones with a new metal railing. The project got put on hold for 3 months, but my dad and I are back at it. I have a long list of blog posts churning in my head, but life feels like a whirlwind right now.
We’ve been home a week and a half and I keep thinking back to China. Our challenge being home now is to taking what happened in our lives and in our family over the last 11 weeks and figure out how to not forget those things. It is so easy to just step back into the routine of life here and forget.
Each member of our family was significantly impacted by our time in China. Our family as a whole was changed – and now we are trying to figure out how those changes can continue in a totally different setting.
If you ask my kids what they miss most about China each of them will say, “the community.” We spent 3 months working alongside, living alongside and laughing alongside amazing people. We spent our days all meshed together. We walked to New Day together, we worked together, we ate lunch together, we walked to dinner and the grocery store and the park together. We did life together all day, every day.
We are part of a beautiful, life-giving community here, but it looks different when you don’t work at the same place each day and walk home to the same apartment complex each evening. It is just different and we are trying to adjust back, yet still embrace being changed by our friends in China.
This week is FULL to the brim of seeing people. Our picnic tables will have sat 51 people by the end of this week. I’m spending my days chopping food, installing new stairs with my dad and remembering that it is August not May. It feels like summer just started and I am so behind on getting ready for our school year. SO MUCH TO DO!
I won’t be posting the rest of this week. I’ll be working on stairs with my dad, cutting more vegetables for meals and trying to figure out what textbooks my kids need! We are back and there has been no slow re-entry to life here, which is both wonderful and hard. It was good to be gone and it is good to be home. I’m grateful for both.
