Transitions and cocoons

I used to travel a lot in my mid-20s. In those pre-tech gadget days, travel was truly a time and space apart.  Once you boarded the plane, climbed onto the train, or hit the road with map in hand, you entered what always felt to be a somewhat sacred space.  No longer where you had come from, and not yet where you were going, it was a time unlike any other.  At the beginning of the trip, your mind would be filled with wrapping up details of the world you were leaving.  By the time you neared your destination, there was space for details of the world you were entering and your mind would gear up for it.  In the middle . . . depending on the length of the trip, there was that space that was just you.  Neither here nor there, just being.

These weeks of January have been marked by transition.  The adjustment for the kids is going as well as could be expected, and they are getting used to new schedules, new teachers, new friends, and new routines.  But at the same time, there is at times a retreat into the familiar, the safe, the expected.  Back in December we had been reading Farmer Boy, but had set it aside for a time as interest waned.  But during this transition phase, whenever a spare moment arises I find the book being pressed into my hand with a plea, "Read Farmer Boy to us?"  The familiar posture of sitting side-by-side and reading brings comfort in an uncertain time.

I have found myself spinning my own cocoons in this transition month.  Those moments right after the kids get on the bus, when the house seems so dark and empty . . . immersing myself in God's word.  He's been faithful to this point, surely He will continue to do so.  I cocoon in my Christmas sweatshirt with the name of my new school written across the front.  It's big and roomy and warm and I can lose myself inside of it . . . and at the same time, begin to take on the new skin of student once more.  At night after the kids are in bed and work is done, I find myself curling up next to my husband to join the Doctor and his companion on another adventure, safe in the knowledge that no matter what evil befalls the universe, by the end of that episode (or the next), the world will be saved (at last temporarily).  My cocoons.

Part of me has wanted to struggle against them and knock them out of the way with vast to-do lists and plans that would make me feel that I was bringing every bit of this new found time under my control.  But I've been experimenting with grace instead.  My lists are small, with just the essentials as mandatory must-do's.  I'm letting myself grieve the stage that is past so that I'll be able to embrace what lies ahead.  We're trying out different routines to see what works.  Learning which elements from homeschooling still work for us now, and which ones can be released. In all of this, I realize how deeply I become my roles.  Letting go of it feels like a rewriting of my whole identity at times. 

But as time goes by, we are making the transition.  No longer where we were, and not yet where we will soon be.  And I'm discovering that grace is good to extend to myself, and it inspires me to move beyond this temporary cocoon.