In the wait

I haven’t written in weeks. Often I process anything big I am trying to wrap my heart and mind around through journaling or writing it all out, editing, and thinking it through, making a little space and time to set it in front of myself. I didn’t write much from 2017 to 2019 because we were in the middle of what felt like one of the hardest seasons we have gone through, and each time I felt we were beginning to crest the wave, another thing would crash down. It felt too big to process, too much to take in, too much to pen down on paper. I kept setting things aside and saving them to go through when we reached the other side. Now here we are, this is not the other side. Everyone is feeling the hard and trying to keep up with all the individual layers that are unique to each person. I think like most people I was eager to end 2019 even as Sean and I were both going through corporate takeovers in our careers that left us feeling incredibly uncertain about our future as a family and our job security moving forward. All we could do is wait. Wait to see how our jobs were going to land, wait to see if our efforts to exit foreclosure and keep our home would work out, wait to see if our toddler that I was spending nights fretting over was going to catch up developmentally. Waiting is not my strongest skill, but it is now something I have had to practice ad nauseam. Here are the things that are hard for me. I have been overly careful not to mention them because it feels like whining, when everyone is having a hard time and some are having a much more tragic and intense time than me. However, I can’t seem to move through what is feeling hard when I won’t acknowledge it. Before a pandemic hit the world one of the things that was keeping me going is the decisions we’ve made for our family moving forward. I was able to pour my efforts into our plans for relocating our family in Summer 2021. I have been applying for my UK RN license, working through the logistics of what it take to move a family of 6 to another country with little but suitcases and bins that we will check on a plane. I’ve been studying for exams, looking at housing, and it has been the plan that has kept me sane in the midst of everything else that has been falling away. I had planned on documenting this process step by step starting with how we came to this decision and what the nuts of and bolts of this process are. I was scheduled for my first part of a 2 part exam on March 23rd, when all the test centers closed the process of working towards this goal sort of ground to a halt. Of all the tings I have grieved in missing friends, worrying over missing therapy appointments for Frankie’s speech, our kids missing school, the halt of our plans to move have been the hardest for me. Possibly, because like everyone else, this part of the wait is something I wish I could just escape from. Right now so many parts of our life are on pause, and there is nothing but time to help move things forward. MIght as well start going through the pile of things I set to the side…