The Big Year

2021.  That year has been written on so many forms throughout the years and it is finally here.  This is the year Emma graduates.  It’s so very hard to believe it’s real.

I began blogging because of Emma.  Way back in my Blogspot days (raise your hand if you’ve been with me that long….) I began documenting our life because we went to a Mother’s Tea at our church and Emma (5 yrs old) was able to attend with every one of her grandmothers and great-grandmothers.  Who gets to do that?!?  Little did I know that years later I’d still be at it.  Through documenting milestones for all our kids, to our life as foster parents, to adopting overseas, to losing our precious Laila, to MOVING overseas.  My blogging maybe a little less regular but here we are… still (only on a way better site though, thanks 1EightyDesign!).

Now we enter the year where I say goodbye to her.  I knew the day would come someday but I didn’t know that when I take her to college, I’d be getting on a plane to travel “home” to our land of Indonesia 10,000 miles away from her.  Oh, I can’t even get into it.  Every. single. time. it comes up I tear up.  Every time.

The clock struck midnight on January 1st and reality hit.  Not just for me, but for her as well. She got in the car and said “I’m so sad.  People said happy 2021 and it became real.”

Oh, how the Lord has been teaching me to hold her loosely this year.  He was gracious in giving us this visa crisis at the beginning of the year and then needing to renew every single month.  “Hold her loosely…” I keep hearing over and over again.  I’m trying!!  It’s just not working!

God calling us into overseas work at this stage of life is hard.  Well, every stage is hard.  A shout out to those mommas with babies and littles, no way would I want to do that right now either!  But the reality is that we will live here through our kid’s college years and weddings and the birth of our grandchildren…. too much to take in.

The moral of this post and my talking in circles is, hold them tight but hold them loosely.  They are on loan to us and we need to make every moment count.  We never know the number of days and even when we think we do, they sneak up on us anyway.

Why didn’t someone warn me how time flies so quickly??  Well they did, I just didn’t listen.

In the meantime, you can find me staying up until 3:30 am, watching Gilmore Girls, and making my gal pancakes in the middle of the night.  Making every moment count.

ps – there are SO MANY things that I want to write about but this one won today.  Stay tuned for a post about our amazing journey to the village of Bina to help serve the Dem tribe.