Grateful for All of Our Spring Chaos

The past few weeks have been spring chaos around our house. Don’t worry. There were no fires or life threatening emergencies.

Alan was out of town for two weeks. He traveled all over the place and had his own cool adventures, to include meeting a group of Rosie Riveters from World War II and ringing the gong at the European stock exchange, Euronext.

But this chaos isn’t about him. It’s about me over here, eighteen years into parenting, still struggling like a fly in a spiderweb.

Last week, I was wriggling all over the place. Things kept happening the past few weeks!

First, we went to visit my family in Alabama for spring break. We also went to Florida and spent a few days at the beach. I did that without Alan too, for the most part. He could not get out of work most of those days.

Alan’s absence was significant because it meant I was in charge of everything, and you know what? I do not wish to be in charge. Being the boss is added stress.

I am not saying there was no fun in all of the spring chaos. There was plenty of fun and happiness.

Once the beach fun was done, it was back to real life. I’m declaring this week recovering week. This week I am going to recover from the last half of March and the first half of April.

What was so stressful?

Nothing and everything. We are in the process of buying a house! That all happened in the last two weeks. In rapid succession, Alan got his assignment from the military, we found a house, made an offer, negotiated the offer, and went under contract. We did the home inspection. Now we are turning in all of our mortgage paperwork.

Even though we have been without Alan for the past three weeks, he came in on the weekends. Sometimes it is not the whole weekend even, but it was enough for him to get to join me on the house hunt and negotiation.

Y’all. The home negotiation actually did not stress me out.

How is that possible?

It went fairly smoothly. We found a home long before I expected too. This is a major cause for celebration! It’s a huge load off our shoulders.

The paperwork is another matter. I spent one entire day of last week working on mortgage documents. Why do I dislike paperwork so much?

Meanwhile, major life milestones are happening all around me for our kids.

Our oldest son landed his very first job. Hurray! Daniel broke his wrist. Caleb injured his back, and J.D. caught a stomach virus that lasted the entire week long.

Everyday, I kept waking up thinking, “Today, I will send JD back to school.”

And everyday, nope. He was still sick.

Somehow, during the entire two years we have lived here, Caleb had never been to the doctor. Impressive, right?

Yet somehow in the past two weeks I have taken all four boys to the doctor. Some of them went multiple times to different doctors. I took our boys to six doctor appointments in one week. As a group, they had three x-rays.

One appointment even left us with major decisions to make about a new biologic medicine to treat severe food allergies.

I’m so grateful for the past three weeks.

They were busy and challenging. I put myself on the back burner until I literally began to self-sabotage. If you see me in the kitchen eating half of a real Krispy Kreme donut, you know that I am the embodiment of an empty cup about to self-destruct. That’s were I found myself by Thursday night.

Eating gluten literally makes my body fall apart, and I know that. Yet, there I was, self-destructing when I needed my body to hold it together the most. Why am I like this?

My writing business has stagnated and shrank because I did not do more than maybe two hours of work on it in the month.

I have gained three pounds since Alan left. Stress makes me gain weight.

I’d forgotten to make myself also a priority. The gluten eating was a reminder to myself that I’m important too. If I do not take care of myself, I cannot take care of anyone else either. For some reason, I have to keep re-learning this lesson.

But I am so grateful for all of these trifling problems.

I am thankful none of our kids’ current health problems are life-threatening. Well, peanut allergy aside, but you know what I mean.

Good and bad things happened, but that is what grows us. I’m thankful we are all safe and accounted for.

And the way God blessed us on this home purchase is such a joy and a relief.

He met our need for a home, and He did it quickly. The Lord provided a quick solution instead of a drawn out situation of waiting and worry. Plus, the new home has a smidge more space than this one. It’s the same basic house, but with one more room.

It feels so refreshing to not have to roll out of bed in the morning and go straight to the Zillow app to see if anything new listed.

Plus, it’s the easiest kind of move. We are moving right down the street. The boys won’t even have to change schools. This is such a huge blessing.

Today I’m praising God for where he has brought us.

My prayer is that we can be a blessing to those around us too. We love this neighborhood so much. I hope as we continue here, we will be able to bless this community at least a fraction as much as it has blessed us.

It is so important to keep faith, hope, love, and perspective when you are going through chaos.

When our family was younger, I once told my friend Lauren, “We have had such a crazy week.”

I’ll never forget Lauren’s reply. “April, I think all of your weeks are crazy.”

That was so funny to me because it was true. Thankfully, we are not in the always crazy phase anymore. Our life these days is a good level of busy. We have plenty to do, but every week does not feel crazy anymore.

These past two weeks were a challenge, but we made it. I’m picking Alan up from the airport in forty minutes. He cannot fix all the crazy, of course. Only God can do that. But having my partner in life back by my side will be a comfort and a relief!

I call this blog “getting my act together.” That’s because I struggle with never feeling good enough.

Having your act together is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe I do pretty much have my act together. Maybe I don’t. I think it’s more important that we cherish what we have and keep moving forward together.

I came across this Bible verse this week which I thought hit the nail on the head and reminded me of why Covid lockdown was such a disaster. Being isolated doesn’t work. We need each other. Through chaos or hard times, young or old or in between, we do need each other.

I hope you all have a good, peaceful week. And if you do have chaos, I hope you find someone share it with.