I'm here, I'm here!!

Mercy, there is a lot of dust gathering on this page. Did you think I had left and was never coming back? Honestly.

There are reasons of course -- it wasn't that there haven't been things to say, I have no fewer than three drafts in my inbox proving otherwise. No, that isn't it. I have things to say but between speaking engagements -- which have been such an honor and a privilege -- from Colorado to Florida and even a hop over to Israel!! -- and a home-renovation and subsequent move, coupled with this stupid awful very bad election season, I have just been too tired to formulate cohesive sentences. Or at least too tired to coordinate cohesive sentences that weren't full of whiny frustrated emotions and adding to an already over-political newsfeed. So rather than hit "publish" on any drafts, I decided that perhaps the season called for being a "Thumper"...you know, if you have nothing good to say, then say nothing.

But I missed you. And I have things to say. And honestly, I can hardly process life without typing it out and sharing -- and oversharing...so here I am, back with my fingers poised on the keyboard in anticipation of letting the sharing begin.

Whew.

First, moving is hard. I am a seasoned-expert in moving, and really as such would assume that I am just so good at it that I make it look easy. Nope. Not even a little bit. Four kids. Two adults. And two dogs.  We accumulate a ton of stuff. A. Ton. Of. Stuff. And moving is hard. Renovating a house even harder.

Kitchen before.

Kitchen almost done.

Kitchen after renovation BEFORE move-in!

I actually hired a lady to help me organize. I told her I needed her to pack Little Red's room and help me organize it in the new house - Cate has great storage space in the new house and I want to ensure we maximize it!

The lady quit after a day. She said she couldn't go up all my stairs. (I'm sorry...I assumed she wouldn't be in the business of organizing if she wasn't up to some stairs....) I felt so mad at myself for seeking help and trusting her. And then, then, she criticized my parenting -- "This child has too many toys. I would never give a child so many toys."

I was sad and mad and overwhelmed.

I was sad someone would pass judgement on our parenting without even knowing how awesome my kids are. (And come on, I have FOUR kids...it does appear Cate has more toys than most toys stores but that is because she inherited ALL the triplets' stuff too!)

I felt mad that she would accept a job and then quit before she had really made a dent in the project.

And I was completely overwhelmed because without her help, I knew the majority of the move would fall to me -- hubby was busy at work, big kids busy at college, and that left me.

Foyer before.

Foyer after.

My sweet friends, however, saw a sweaty, overwhelmed friend and stepped in.

Paige came over one Sunday afternoon and worked to pack breakable pottery pieces and help me move them safely to the new house. She gave up her whole afternoon for me.

My friend's sister, NeNe came to discuss staging my house for sell and ended up staying to help me organize and move and then unpacked enough to surprise my kids and husband with a semi-settled home when they came in to the new house! (You bet that NeNe is no longer just the sister of my friend....I adore her!)

My Bible Study group came and moved the kids' closets and our pantry just so I wouldn't have to. How dear is that? They loaded their cars and moved clothes like a machine getting the kids' closets put away!

Family room -- with actual ROOM for Benjamin to drive around!

And still....I spent five hours there last Wednesday and again today trying to get the last bits packed up and out of that house. I swear our junk is multiplying in our absence. Cate used her first day of Thanksgiving break boxing and loading and unloading.

We aren't completely finished. The garage has boxes that we will have to move. But the house is empty tonight and clean and ready to go on the market. Sometimes being an adult is hard and requires tackling the ugly dirty sweaty jobs in order to make things better. And this move is doing just that -- the new house is more accessible, more use-able for our family. We have space for visitors -- something very important to me. And we have room for a certain Little Red to run and play and throw softballs!

A street in Jerusalem. My very favorite!

And sometimes being an adult means amazing friends who walk beside you, wonderful opportunities to share our story, and incredible experiences that make being 40-something the absolute best!

Happy Thanksgiving, dear ones! I won't be gone too long this time, I promise.

Crunchy grass and a ready-to-snap Mama.

My grass is crunchy. I have crunchy, dried up, dying in the August-in-Mississippi heat grass. Yuck. I have watched for the sprinklers to come up and on. Nothing.  In June and early July it wasn't an issue, we had an afternoon shower almost daily. It was lovely. Then it stopped. And nothing. Just crunchy grass.

And so I began to worry but then that became horribly insignificant in light of the very real and very significant health issues affecting my little family. 

But this week as the calendar turned to September and as life calmed down for me a bit, my crunchy grass began to irritate me in ways that you might not understand unless you have lived in the desert for 10 years and desperately want nice soft non-crunchy grass under your feet. So I did what I decided I had to do. I began to drag a hose out and park a manual sprinkler in the yard, set a timer and move the stupid thing to hit a different area.

After several days of no doubt seeing me lug the sprinkler and hose out to the front yard this week, my sweet neighbor sent me a text yesterday -- "Um, Carol, don't you have a sprinkler system?" 

Well, hello, I would have thought so but have you SEEN my crunchy grass????

Sweet neighbor told me where her control box is located and I went barreling out to the garage to move boxes. 

Turns out, we DO in fact have a sprinkler system. One controlled by a box in the small garage that I do not use. And one the previous owners had turned off. The spring grass had overgrown the sprinkler heads in the yard and the straw delivery I had requested the week BEFORE we moved in had covered the ones in my flower beds. 

Now y'all, I know this is a stupid first-world problem. I know that crunchy grass is not the end of the world. And I know I should just pat myself on the back for conserving water or something such as that. But really, I had been dragging that hose all over God's crunchy green earth and I had built-in sprinklers?  Really?

It was almost too much...or maybe the problem is Carol is poised to snap in two pieces like the crunchy grass after two weeks of her trio in college....or maybe the move has gotten to me....or maybe it is post-traumatic-stress after the two hospitalizations this month.

Whatever the reason, I sat down and cried. Like a baby. Dear hubby asked what was wrong, "It is too much," I mumbled. Completely perplexed he assured me the sprinklers were working fine and the yard would be ok.

He is right. The yard will be. And me too. I will be. I am not just yet. I feel like my personality is flat. Not very me. I know it is because I do not have my groove yet in this new city or in this new season. I am at once super proud of my kids and selfishly wanting them to be back in my nest as littles who require my assistance. I am at once surrounded by some of my favorite people in the world and yet not in a rhythm with them yet. And did I mention my grass is crunchy?

Today, sweet Little Red played the Xylophone for chapel at her sweet little school. At her insistence, Mason let us swing by his college and he went to hear her (Yes, bless his heart, he had a morning he could sleep in but instead got up extra early for Cate!). We sat in that little gym as the students proceeded in, with Cate's class as the choir. We sang and prayed and listened to the sweetest prayer requests for children's daddies, friends and fish. And of course, we heard our sweet girl make her musical debut!

As we walked back to the car, Mason and I discussed the beauty of the morning. Just 30 minutes really. Thirty minutes where the world seemed a better place, where hope seemed to fill the future. Where when Chaplain Annie closed with "The Lord be with you," a gym-filled with young children responded, "And also with you." I have to tell you, everything seemed right in the world.

The crunchy grass will be ok. And this Mama will find her groove in this new season of life. And my four kiddos will make their way. And you can count on the fact that I will tell you all about it.

The Lord be with you, dear friends.

Consider this an invitation to visit!!

Twenty years ago this summer, my husband and I stood on the front step of our dear friends' home as the four of us said tearful good-byes. With tears literally dripping down my chin, we walked across their Alabama yard and climbed into a U-Haul truck with all our worldly possessions and began to drive north.

I was scared to leave the city that had been home for the entire four years of our marriage -- but more than that I was anxious about our moving north -- as in NORTH NORTH, above the Mason-Dixon line! But in the midst of the fear I was also excited for the adventure Wade and I were embarking on.   I envisioned us embracing life in Chicago. I saw us walking to all the markets. I imagined picnics on Lake Michigan, and I couldn't wait to absorb the culture, see the sights, take in the shows.

What we couldn't know that summer morning driving out of Alabama was that this would begin a ball rolling that wouldn't bring us back below the Mason-Dixon line for a long long time.

Now y'all, if you have been around here for any length of time, you know that rather than wrap my arms around life in the big city, I wrapped them around teeny tiny babies in Chicago when our first "baby" came in a bundle of three. I did take walks in Chicago but the one time I took the triplets to the market on foot, we walked there bought a couple cans of soup and some milk and realized that was all that would fit under the buggy that held my trio. It was no small feat pushing the semi-grocery-laden stroller and three bouncing babies all the way home.

Going for a walk in Chicago.

We did embrace Chicago though -- we loved Wrigley Field and the Bears. We had a favorite pizza spot and I still miss the Thai delivery that made all things yummy. We had some sweet friends in Chicago -- including one I stalked for an hour after I realized she was pushing a triplet stroller but that is another story!

At Wrigley Field!

And when the time came for Wade to pick residency spots, we were so close to Rochester, Minnesota and the world famous Mayo Clinic, that we said, why not? And moved our little family even further away from sweet tea and grits.

In the lobby of the Mayo Clinic's St. Mary's Hospital.

After five years in the tundra, we landed in Dallas for a year for a fellowship before heading way out west for Wade to work with some of his closest friends from residency.

See, the ball was rolling in a way that almost made it impossible to stop. It wasn't that we didn't contemplate returning home with every single decision. We did. When the time to choose residency programs came we were torn between Mayo and one in the South. When it was time to make a post-training job decision we looked all over the south.

I called a woman who worked with special needs children in Mississippi during the decision-making. The triplets were six and I needed her input about raising the boys back home. In a beautiful lilting voice, she told me that the state NEEDED us but that I would be sacrificing my boys. I took a deep sigh and felt the door closing to all I knew as home.

And so we unpacked our hopes in the middle of the desert in Phoenix, Arizona. And in this new city we embraced the sunshine; we embraced the unique beauty of saguaro cacti; and we embraced the spirit of wild west living. We made some dear dear friends, and we watched our little family grow from five to six.

But there was this little sweet-tea-drinking part of me that reared its head every now and then and made me long for home and the familiarity of magnolia trees, muggy humid summers and maroon-wearing football games.

As the triplets grew -- as we learned that there are no perfect places where the services are magically lined up and the school systems know exactly how to meet Benjamin and Mason's needs -- I began to wonder if perhaps we could have moved back to Mississippi. But by then, my husband was entrenched in his practice and my kids in their home.

Then one day, my dear hubby received a phone call urging him to come home, to come home to work and help the children of our beloved home state. We wrestled with the decision. We prayed over it. We debated it. We researched it.

And ultimately, we packed our boxes and headed back home.

We've been here three weeks, dear ones. Three. I am relatively settled. Pictures are on the walls. And most of the boxes have been hauled away. We have broken bread with numerous friends from childhood, college, and even Wade's new job. Words can not even begin to tell you how full my heart is from the warm welcome we have received, from the outpouring of love and encouragement our dear ones have offered.

And so as I take a deep sigh looking around my sweet little southern home, I can't help but think this is but a small glimpse of how heaven will feel. For my little front porch is earthly -- it can rot, cave in, or even be full of spiderwebs (thankfully only the last of those has happened!) -- but heaven, heaven will be perfect. 

"My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you" John 14:2 (NIV)

From our front porch!

Heaven's rooms will be filled with loved ones who have been waiting for us to come home -- we will be hugged, embraced, and I have no doubt we will be served sweet tea! (And in the meantime, you are welcome at our home anytime!)