The Comfort of Consistency

I do not like change. I've gotten better at accepting it, but I still find comfort in consistency. I remember crying my eyes out as a child when my mom decided the gumball tree in our yard needed to be cut down. How could she! What did I care that it was a messy tree. It had always been there, and I liked it.

I'm not stupid: I know life is just one change after another. If you don't have change in your life, it's because you're dead. But, somehow, I think it might be a God-given, integral part of me that craves consistency. God, Himself, never changes, so maybe that's why I don't like change. (Malachi 3:6--"For I am the Lord, I do not change." and Hebrews 13:8--"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.") It's not just me, either--I'm always reading about how routines help children cope with their changing environment. And weekends are the most exhausting for us adults, too, because we're out of our daily routines.

My life needs to just be a little more boring than it's been over the past three years, and it doesn't look to be shaping up that way. I married Doug because, among other things, he was solid, steady, and "boring"--he had no aspirations of dragging me off to Ughanda, becoming a politician, or rocking any boats. And yet, loving this supposedly "secure" man has brought more change, spice, chaos and controversy into my life than I ever dreamed possible!

And now more change is going to happen. My brother has applied to enter the navy as a chaplain. I love my brother. I love his wife. I finally got the sister I always wanted, one whom I know I could do all the sisterly things with that I've always dreamed of doing: sharing stories, shopping together, cooking together, planning vacations together. And just as my children are starting to know and love their uncle and aunt, now God is calling them away for the next 14 years.

I understand being in God's will is the only place a person will be happy and safe. But, I'm just intensely sad right now...it'll be better another day, but now I get to just have a good cry while I write this because it's not ok today and it won't be ok tomorrow either. In a way, someone moving away is like that person dying because the relationship just naturally changes due to distance.

Wyatt loves his Uncle Johnathan and Aunt Liza so much. I guess I had selfish visions of raising our children together, and that just won't happen. I don't know how to explain this to Wyatt. He asks for Uncle Johnathan every day, and without being able to see him except for once a year or so, that relationship will likely dwindle in importance, and that makes me so sad, I just don't know how to express it. How stupid is that--I'm crying for what Wyatt, Emerson, and Amelia will miss out on and they're contently sleeping in their beds. Typical mother.

God and Family are all I have at the end of the day. When everything fails, that's all any of us has.