In the middle

That's where I've been these past couple months, in the middle.  As a friend wrote this morning,

Beginnings are shiny and exciting; endings are often hard won and celebrated, but it’s the middle places where the real work is done, where the change occurs, the healing happens, the laughter and tears roll up into each other. - Dana

So often, the change happens without us realizing it.   The initial moments catch our attention, but the real working it out comes over the days, during moments we wrestle with it in the midst of the rest of life.  Maybe while doing dishes or folding laundry or walking the dog or driving to work we catch a few minutes to hammer out more of it with God, then it's right back into the rest of life again.  String enough of those days together, and you realize that somehow, in the midst of it, something that once felt so big or foreign or scary is no longer marked by those characteristics.  It just is.  And it has become part of your life.

That's much the way that God has been working here.  A new idea or a necessary change doesn't happen immediately, but goes through this hammering out in the day-to-day.   Right now there are lots of little threads that have begun to be woven into this tapestry of life, but they're hanging, waiting to be picked back up and woven in when the time is right.

Meanwhile, in the middle .  . .

there is support for a husband with a new job . . .

there is learning to (mostly) read and write (a little) Hebrew . . .

there is the crossing-off-the-list of dishes and laundry and cleaning . . .

there is a part-time job of helping make math less scary for students . . .

there is daily teaching of my own two students, one in 2nd grade, and the other in kindergarten . . .

there is worship and service through our church . . .

there is a graduate class that expands my thinking about God on a regular basis and provides discussion with others . . .

there is reaching out to other women who have experienced the loss of a child through miscarriage, stillbirth, or other circumstance later on . . .

there is daily seeking God in his word, striving to listen to and obey his voice . . . 

there is the reading of books (when I get the chance) . . .

there is the writing down of the ways that God seems to be speaking, and what he is doing in our lives . . .

and there are tentative jottings of where life may be headed, so that just in case it does go that direction, we can look back at see how He laid the path step by step and remember that it was, from the beginning, God's path.