settling in

I don't think it's a coincidence that one of the boxes I opened our second day here contained the book After the Boxes are Unpacked.  This is a book I read about 10 years ago after our first move here (and hadn't really seen much since).  I attended a Hearts at Home conference and went to a breakout session called "Surviving Relocation".  The title caught my attention, and as someone who moved every couple of years throughout childhood (my dad was in the Navy) and also moved several times since getting married (my husband says he was on a college tour), I thought I'd see what this session was all about.  I cried through the whole thing.  It validated feelings I wasn't even acknowledging that I had.  The speaker referenced the book I unpacked last week and talked about how when you move you go through a grieving process.  There are different steps of grieving that movers experience, and it's perfectly normal and ok for me to feel things like denial, anger, depression and sadness.  Eventually I'm supposed to get to acceptance, but I think I'll allow myself to go through the steps in order and not deny the fact that this is a grieving process. 

So I started reading the book again.  And I started crying again.  But I'm doing ok.  I've actually made a couple of friends, thanks to my scouring the internet before we moved, looking for resources for when we'd get here.  Tomorrow we're going to a friend's house who I met through a local homeschool group.  She's going to walk me through the steps of what I'll need to do for the legalities of homeschooling in Minnesota.  Yesterday we walked to another friend's house.  It turns out she moved to this neighborhood (from 15 minutes away) just 10 days before we did.  And she goes to the church we're trying, and was in the nursery on Sunday.  She even offered to watch Mercy last night while I took the other kids to a Fall Rally for the homeschool group.  I did leave Mercy with her, but we never made it to the Fall Rally.  I found the address to the place online and printed directions from mapquest, but I didn't follow them correctly.  I can blame it on the torrential downpour that occurred at the exact moment I was supposed to switch highways, or the fact that I'm the new girl.  It would have been nice to go, but since we've never been, we don't really know what we missed.  There will be other opportunities to meet people.  

We are getting settled.  At least upstairs is mostly kind of done.  I don't have anything on the walls yet, which I should.  Because pictures make it seem more like home.  I kind of lost motivation to get everything unpacked.  I was doing so well... the kitchen was done early on, and I made sure everyone had bedding the first night.  Brooklyn and Zeke were required to unpack their own rooms.  Judah's is done.  Mercy's is waiting for beds that were in Joe's grandma's house, so she's sleeping with Brooklyn for now.  And the school room.  I thought I'd be finished with that by now.  I guess because it's out of sight it's out of mind too.  I really need to get it done so I can assess what's needed to begin in a few weeks.  I really like to be organized.  I did a little today.  Maybe tomorrow I can call that room done too.  And I should really get some things on the walls.  I need to see faces of family and friends (besides just on facebook!).

 God is good.  He knows me and He knows my grieving and my honest attempt to settle in here.  And He's holding me through it all.