Unseen.Unsettled.Uncomfortable

Twice this past week I've found myself in tears when a song from Moana of all things started playing.  It seems silly, but I think it's been fitting.  I'm not good with change.  I'm not good with uprooting and being replanted.  I take time to bloom, and I will, but right now I feel like I'm in the withered stage where you aren't sure if there's any salvaging the plant.

I feel angry.  A lot.  My chord is short.  This season with my little men is hard.  The oldest needs so much.  He doesn't ask for much, but he needs one-on-one focused attention that I find hard to give.  He's a talker, a non-stop talker and sometimes it's a lot.  My middle boy is bold.  He is NOT afraid to put up a fight, anywhere with anyone.  It will make him a strong man, but it makes for a weary mama.  The baby.  He's so happy and good, until he unleashes this ear piercing screech with a loud no.

There are days where I feel like our whole life revolves around my husband and his career.  It's not that I have dreams or aspirations that I feel like I'm not living or getting to do, and if you asked me if I want to trade our military lifestyle, I do not.  But now, in this season I am unsettled.  I'm having to setting into to a new place, a new surrounding, and it's strange because we keep getting welcomed "home".  To some it means welcome back to Illinois, to others back to the states.  But the thing is, for our family we're always home.  Wherever we settle.  Plant.  Take root.  That becomes our home.

 

In Guam we focused a lot on our little family.  Five people.  It was good.  And it's good now, but it's different and it's unsettling.  It feels a little like we're all living in "Summer Break mode".  The new job hours haven't really been set and so far they're flexible.  Its definitely been hard to get used to, because it feels like I can't get into a new, normal routine. We're not near a military community who "gets it".  From our house, to setting up bills, to getting our shipments of household items everything feels like so much added work, and it's draining.

I think swimming lessons were just a think that have been this seemingly simple thing that has just undone me here.  I really wanted to continue the older boys in swimming.  They made a lot of progress in Guam and I wanted to keep that up.  The middle one, he did one lesson and had refused since.  Re.fused.  The older one is doing great, but should have been placed in a higher level than he was.  It's always starting over for them and having to prove ourselves.  It was one of these days at swimming where I found myself in tears by the side of the pool as Moana belted away and I felt completely unseen.  My older one was doing his swim lessons and I could see he was basically doggy paddling with his head out of the water because his teacher doesn't let him go to actually see that he can swim with his face in the water.  The middle one was literally retreated on the side of a different pool area hiding in a bush because even though I told him he didn't have to do swim lessons and he could play with me and Max, he wasn't in the mood.  The baby was swimming away with the lifeguard on edge.  And here comes this song about "See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me And no one knows, how far it goes..." And all I could think about was how I feel UNSEEN.  No one there at that pool knew that a month ago we lived across the world, we'd swim in 40 feet of water seeing ocean animals surrounding us, and here it felt foreign.    

I'm unsettled, unseen, uncomfortable, and I worry that while I'm weary, I'm damaging my kids and I'm burdening my husband to have to gather the pieces once again.