That Part When I Admit I Was Too Tired To Blog While In Florida...

How to Pretend You're on Vacation While on a Business Trip, Part 2...

I feel as if we just did Florida like old people... or normal people...  or something...

The good news is, after six days of training, I am, indeed, licensed to teach Musikgarten classes in the fall!  Yay for that, because it would have been really awful to have to report that I failed the training, especially because it would have left me with no legitimate excuse for leaving my children with Grandma for over a week while traveling to Orlando!

The other good news is, I made some new music friends.  This is pretty significant for an introvert who sometimes struggles with the very sad facebook videos that people keep bumping of that time when I was really sick and led worship.  This is super significant when that same introvert walks into a room full of people who have been teaching music for many years and who are music majors and who sing very well.  I may have started my introduction by stating, "I am undoubtedly the least qualified person to be in this room..."  Oh my goodness, I often feel that way...  everywhere I go...  and yet, I keep going...

Just to give some perspective, this is how I felt at the beginning of the week...  all sweet and cute and early-childhood music teacher-like:

By the end of the week, it was more like this...  you know...  the usual:

The other, other good news is, Phil and I had tons of free (or very cheap) fun.  How about some highlights:

Disney Springs:

If you're ever in Orlando on a non-Disney trip, at least stop in at Disney Springs to say your feet have touched Disney ground.  It's one of the few places you can experience Disney magic with free parking, and the free outdoor concert venues are pretty fun!  We went to Disney Springs twice on this trip.  On Sunday we enjoyed dinner and a movie at AMC (Are you kidding me?  You can do that?  They bring you food (OK, I ordered Mac and Cheese with Chicken and Bacon in it, but c'mon, what else do you expect) and keep refilling your Raspberry Coke, while you sit there?  Sweet!)  On Wednesday, we went to Rainforest Cafe, where we dined with the fish.  Also awesome, although I really did choose chicken parm as opposed to fish and chips, because it's sort of weird to eat fish while talking to fish, you know, with "fish are friends, not food," running through your mind...

Oh, I almost forgot...  I also had the oldest daughter's lightsaber fixed...  because I am a super cool mom who doesn't mind that everyone at Disney Springs thought the lady running around with a Star Wars weapon and no kids was a little crazy...

The Magic Kingdom, It's Who You Know:

On Tuesday, my super incredible friend Lindsay, who works for Disney, was gracious enough to meet up with us and use her guest passes to get us into the Magic Kingdom for the evening!  It was so fun to hang out with her and y'all know I am never going to pass on a bonus ride on Dumbo or Small World or Splash Mountain or Carousel of Progress or the People Mover (we Skyped the kids while riding that one, I still can't decide if that was an awesome parenting moment or an epic fail)!  And... of course... there's Wishes.  I'm pretty sure I could never live in Orlando, because I would buy season passes to Disney and insist on watching Wishes every single night of my life...

Free Sea World Tickets, Yes, Please:

If you know me at all, you know Sea World is one of my happy places.  As I mentioned in the first post about this trip, I scored free Sea World tickets, and I was more than happy to use them after my last day of training!  Sea World is going through some significant changes, and I'm pretty sure this is the last time we will have the opportunity to see the Orca shows as they have been for decades.  Please, don't judge, but I love me some Shamu, rockin' out to loud music and fireworks late at night.  I also love the stingray touch pool...  a lot...  I mean, I could live there...  We had free dining (which is a good deal, because it was free, but I would never pay for it, because Sea World food is pretty awful).  The photo booth was not free, but worth every penny...

And the Ocean:

We started our trip back home, Saturday, by spending a couple of hours at the Atlantic Ocean.  This feels like a big deal to me, because it marks that I have traveled from coast to coast over the course of 11 months!  The ocean is just beautiful... 

 
We essentially drove straight home, but we did stop to sleep in a Wal-Mart parking lot for about 2 1/2 hours...  Too much coffee and way too much chocolate later, it's time to see what else we can accomplish as the summer winds down!

L.         

End Game...

Funny when you realize the dream wasn't ever really the dream...

What do you want?  What will make you happy? 

These are questions that have been bouncing around in my heart for quite some time now.  Sometimes it's my husband asking, because he is this legitimately amazing person who would actually move heaven and earth to purchase, do, be, make happen whatever it is that I want, if it is within his power to do so, and sometimes even if it's not.  I'm not sure how many dads look at their future sons-in-law and say, "Good luck with this one," but mine did.  I am high maintenance... apparently...

But more often than not, these questions have been internal.  I have been asking them myself.  And I haven't been able to come up with very good answers, if I'm honest, which I try to be.  But there is a common theme.  Over and over and over again, I have said that what I want, what would make me happy, is stability.  And I really believed it.  But then I lived through the past 19 months...

In October of 2013, I was thrilled to be going "home".  After a 12 year journey that took us through 5 states, 9 houses, 6 churches, and more heartbreak than I ever thought I could live through, we were finally going to have that "moment" when you realize that God really loves you and has set aside this particular second in history just for you, to show you how everything has worked together for good, how it was all necessary to bring you to the specific place for which you were born.  Breathe in, breathe out, the trouble is over, the years that the locusts ate are finished, you can stop wandering around in the desert, because this is why you were created.  You... have... arrived.

It was the dream.  This was everything I ever wanted... in 1997.

Here we were moving into a little house just yards away from the first home we ever owned, from the house we walked away from in 2001 to begin this adventure.  That house long since burned to the ground, but this one is eerily similar to such a point that I sometimes forget the dining room, laundry room, and master bedroom are not the ones from the original house.  This is what our lives would have looked like if we'd lived in the same house all these years...

Here we were taking a staff position at a church that is small, but not too small, that has a calendar with no space for another event, that has blended worship and canned music and a youth group and children's programming for the kids.  This is what our lives would have looked like if we had landed the elusive youth pastorate at a desirable church all those years ago and just hung on...

If Phil had become a course of study guy, trading an extensive education for ordination the quick and easy way, never questioning, never learning new things...

If I had avoided school altogether, settling in with the homesteading families and living under the umbrella of submission, never really seeking the call God had for my life... 

If the kids had embraced the safety of mediocrity instead of flourishing in their spiritual formation and talents, missing out on the beauty of nonconformity...

We could have done it, too.  We could have been those people.  But we never would have been us.  And chances are pretty good we wouldn't have known you.  Yes, you, particularly if you are one of the hundreds upon hundreds of people we met because of the choices we made over those 12 years.  What a loss... for us... for you... for the world... for the Kingdom...

What I wanted at 17 is not what I want at 35.  Let me be clear.  I don't want this.  I don't want this, but I am so thankful that God allowed us to experience it, because I might have spent my entire life wishing for something I didn't want if these months hadn't played out like they have.  I don't want this, and I know now that it's not what we were created for.  I don't want this, I was wrong, and it's OK.

May I return, briefly, to these haunting words that have changed my life forever?  "A cloud of missed possibilities envelops every beginning: it is always this beginning, this universe, and not some other. Decision lacks innocence. Around its narrations gather histories of grievance: what possibilities were excluded?" (Keller, 2003, 160).  Oh, friends, there are possibilities that were excluded, but I am less and less convinced that histories of grievance are worth grieving, for had we made different decisions, had we chosen a different beginning, a different universe, we would be grieving you.  We would be grieving us.

I don't have to wonder anymore.  I have seen things in the past few months that most people never get to see.  Sometimes I feel a little bit like I am in The Twilight Zone, or maybe I'm George Bailey, because I honestly believe I have been given the opportunity to see what life would have looked like if we'd made different choices.  There are still moments of letting go that are difficult, but overall I know we did what was right.  There's no staying here, though.  Turn page, time for another adventure...

L.