In life, I typically feel like I am playing house, as if it is a game. Sometimes I am blind in the unknown seasons of adulting, like now, as we are moving accross the country.
The last weeks have been a crazy rush while prepping to move to San Diego (you can read about rapidly moving here). I’ve experienced a lot of new adulting things–running a garage sale, borrowing a friend’s whole house, watching a toddler amidst a construction zone, and downsizing and packing five people’s stuff into a container the size of a parking spot while muddling through legal details in taxes, budgets, bills, renting, insurance, buying and selling cars, houses, and breastmilk. It doesn’t feel like a game much anymore.
Adulting in Adulthood
When did my world become so adult-ish? I know I’ve collected adulthood over the years, but as we move on to new places and things, this adulthood phenomenon has begun to rain down around me rather like a torrential downpour.
And through it all, I just see a haze. One big fat fog, which I am guessing is acidic, numbing me one moment, requiring me to cry the next, but most notably, it is causing me to not see very much.
Prose For The Unknown
We are supposed to be moving from NoVA in 1.5 weeks. We don’t know if we are driving together or separately across the country, nor which route we will go. We don’t know if we are renting or selling our house here. We are living out of suitcases, my husband is limping on a messed up foot, and I am pretty much bedridden as I threw-out my back, simply by doing the everyday hard work of picking up my baby.
In addition, we have major sections of our house needing renovation, and have no plan on how to do this.
We also don’t have a place to move into in San Diego, which I find concerning only because I am not even remotely worried that this isn’t nailed down yet. (Shouldn’t I care a little more?)
My dad keeps referring to our evident blindness and then quotes this Bible verse:
I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them, I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do, I will not forsake them.” Isaiah 42:16
Of course, I don’t take it personal that he has seemed to gather from the way we are doing things that we are a tad, if not entirely blind. After all, he’s got nice things to say to us blind people.
(A blind person?) TheoJunior via Compfight
Being Loved While Blind in the Unknown
So while I stand here in a fog, blurry shapes around me, still wondering why we have so much adultish things to take care of . . . people are loving us.
I have one friend who has pretty much adopted my toddler, which is quite excellent, as he seems to otherwise be finding the nails and saws laying around as we renovate. And when she isn’t around, others offer to help.
A person sold us their perfect-for-us van for many thousands of dollars under what we would be able to get it for from an auto dealership, so now I am pimpin’ that ride like a boss–a metaphorically blind boss.
Someone organized meals for us, so now every-other-day miraculously prepared food appears. I am finding this exceptionally convenient since our oven and range was ripped out and thrown away.
Then, at least one friend a day stops by to help us pack, tear up drywall, paint, tile, bring us frappuccinos, flowers, or let us stay in their house and soak in their tub.
And while my dad lovingly points out our blindness, he and my mom make sure my kids are still learning things or doing homework, because I sure as heck am not doing meaningful stuff like that with them.
Blindness Gives Us Room To Be Loved
Still, ironically in this piece of adulthood I am now living, sometimes I still find myself freaking-out about how I will take care of Elijah tomorrow, when it just so happens that everyday so far has seemed to take care of itself.
My dad is right–we haven’t been forsaken or abandoned. This is saying a lot, as most of these kind hearted people keep reminding us that they must love us a whole, whole lot, because they are essentially helping us leave and abandon them but are still helping us! (So sorry, guys!)
If there is any good in this season where I am adulting both hard and scared, it is that this unknown requires me to experience unconditional love. I might be blind, but sometimes being blind–unorganized, unplanned, and anything but together–is what makes hope, faith, and love shine the brightest.
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Eventually, as it is with most hard things, because of this move, season of adulting, and experiencing love within it, lots of good came out of it.
Elisa started-over, revamped Average Advocate, and begin coaching other ordinary, overwhelmed, adulting people to be who they are meant to be and make the difference in the world they were born to make.
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