recovery…and intentional living…

Almost one week after our move, there are some signs of normalcy peeking through.

Pulling out the baking sheets to make cookies…(such a strange face, Parker)

Putting some of the kids books on shelves…

Finding the perfect spot for new slippers…

Getting around to doing the laundry…finally…

Preparing for the next family production of Patch the Pirate…supposedly it is happening tonight…

They are all good signs. Signs that we are settling in and getting back to regular life. But even with all that, I think we are still very much in the middle of “recovery”. The kids don’t want to be anywhere but home, everyone has had strange sleeping patterns, I keep getting up in the middle of the night and walking into the bathroom instead of the hallway, and I don’t quite think Fiona “gets” that we’re not going back to the other house again.

Yeah, I would call it “recovery”…regrouping from a big event and figuring out what happens next.  I think about other big events in my life like our wedding and our babies – both had a built-in recovery period. Honeymoons are just as much for recovering from the wedding than they are for…other stuff. Our kids came with their own built-in recovery period – the drastic change in the rhythm of life forced us to slow down, focus on the next feeding, and take time to process what just happened to our lives.

It’s healthy and positive and healing. But honestly, I think it would be easy for me to get stuck in that “recovery” phase, and let the world slip on by outside my door while I sit and stare at the ceiling, wondering what happened to me. It’s just too easy.

But I keep cycling back to something I have been thinking about the last two months. We have been studying the book of Luke in Bible study, and I am constantly struck by the example that Jesus gave us of how He lived His life. Everything had purpose. Everything had intention. Even when he stayed back at the Temple when he was 12 years old, he knew what his purpose was when He told his parents,

“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”(Luke 2:49 ESV)

I want to live like that. I want to be intentional about what I do, what I say, how I live. I want to use the time I have for things that have purpose. Even this in-between time in a house with no pictures on the walls and half our possessions in boxes, I don’t want to just be in a mental holding pattern, but to make sure this time matters. Because our time here…every minute…matters.