ramblings

I don't know where the vanilla is.  This isn't my house.  This isn't my kitchen.  Now that you mention it, I don't have a house or a kitchen.  We're half way through a 2 month stay at another family's house while they are out of the country.  We are operating with a steady level of chaos and discomfort with prayers of, "God, please make a way."  It isn't dark and it isn't terrifying, but it is irritating and exhausting, especially to this girl who loves to have control, to have a plan, to know where the vanilla is.  Noelle is 3 and has lived in 7 (!) different homes.  And now we are scurrying to find a place to live for next year as it looks like we'll be at Pepperdine for one more year.  We can't quite get our heads around it, as we had very much assumed we'd just be here for one year before making our way someplace "to settle" with a longer term job, and a house, and a wall where we could mark the kids' growth. 

I'm doing my best to establish order in my short-term home, though trying to do so in such a temporary living situation feels futile.  Still, we have weekly park days, library days, beach days, play dates.  We have chores and meals and prayers.  The kids have done remarkably well living in someone else's house, sleeping in another kid's room, seeing another family's pictures scattered around.  I don't think they can hear it, but I feel like there are chords of dissonance playing in my head, like all of the notes being played in our lives aren't making sense or sounding harmonic.  It's not terrible.  There is music, but it is uncomfortable and I'd like to switch to a different track that has a more appealing tune. 

And we wonder what God is teaching us - in what ways we are listening or in what ways we are missing what He wants to do with us.  Is the lesson simply to hang on to Him along this ride of life?  Simply to trust Him?  Do we need to pray with a different method or be transformed in some profound way?  I keep coming back to trust.  I'm stumbling through Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade, which seems apropos right now.  If nothing else, it reminds me that I'm not the first person to wonder what God is doing in my life and when life is going to start making sense!  It doesn't refer to abandonment in the sense of doing nothing, but seeing life with more of God's action in it.  Not that we're waiting for God to act, but trusting that He is acting for and not against us.  Our homelessness is for us, not to make us crazy, but perhaps to refine us, perhaps to humble or strengthen us.  Perhaps to keep our eyes on our heavenly home or to help us remember people all around the world who have never been so fortunate as to live in a 3 bedroom condo - even for 2 months. 

So we press on in spite of our discomfort, in spite of not being able to see what's around the bend.  We are trying to be wise, trying to do the best we can with this hand of cards we've got right now.  I will keep yearning for order, which I don't think is a bad thing to long for.  Life will not be fully ordered in this life.  I understand that.  But I do hope that there will come a time when I know where the vanilla is.  But in the meantime, I made cookies w/ almond extract.  And, you know what?  They weren't that bad.