I am wrapping up a TON of school year ministry type stuff and I am preparing for a TON of summer ministries, and this year gets even stranger as I am also beginning to work on plans for while I will be gone next fall. I am living in a state of already and not yet for sure.
Summer is closer than I care to imagine.
Now if only Mother Nature would catch on as well.
I grieve the end of every school year because the kids are always soo marvelous, however it is ALWAYS time for the year to end and for the kids to move on to the next year.
I grieve knowing I won't be at the start of next school year, despite I know how wonderful it will be to have time at home with baby.
It is strange to think through the start of maternity leave and questions fill my head:
- Where will we worship?
- Do I come back to "work" to worship? It is the only worshipping community I know here in town - however, I don't want to be drawn to actually work, rather I want to enjoy the chance to worship with my husband (seriously this never happens - I think we can count on less than one hand the number of times we have sat in the pews together to worship) and a new babe in arms.
- Do we jump from church to church here in town and explore what others are doing?
- The details that I need to leave for the multitude of people (seriously thankful for these folks) who will be covering for me while I am gone
- The plans and the back up plans - the plans for if I go early and the plans for if I go late (seriously, nearly banking on going late)
- I literally have started a binder of information for people who are covering for me while I am gone - does it seem semi excessive - yes, however, I don't know how else to keep everything organized for them and accessible
- Not to also forget that I have stacks of postcard reminders that need to be sent on certain days that are already printed and just have a date to be mailed on/by
- Also mission trips to be signed up for, paperwork to be collected, information to be processed and registrations to be mailed
- Confirmation will also happen
- which I am coming back for (at least for that Sunday, I can't walk with these kids for 3 years, to sit at someone else's confirmation two blocks down the street - it would kill me just about as much as some of them would be disappointed)
- There are moments in which it almost seems like more work to be gone than to be here
Yes, I know it will all be fine. For some reason crossing under the 100 day mark for one reason or another on top of registering, on top of Marc pushing to start working on the nursery, this sweet baby is becoming more and more real (not that I didn't think it was real before, however, as my belly expands the reality becomes more real for me).
In completely unrelated things: our chickens are growing like crazy and as soon as Mother Nature plays along they are moving outside to their coop (currently the evening temps are just a little lower than I would care for them to be for the current size, however they have grown a TON). I hope to get some new pictures of them this weekend on one of my real cameras, these are just some photos from my iphone (which does take decent pictures but not awesome ones) from the other night when we were playing with the chickens in the basement (yes, they still live in the baby pool in our basement). Dakota remains fascinated by them but has not even come mildly close to them, I think she has a slight dose of fear of them (of which I have zero intent of helping her overcome).
Please send spring or even skip us to summer, or at least send the sunshine.
Love, northern Minnesota (and probably many more places)
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