Love Thursday: July

I'm going home. For six glorious days next month, Moose and I will be out at my friends Chris and Justin's new home (their first!). I can't wait to do so many things, like:

• See Chris and Justin's adorable baby girl, who has gotten so huge since I've been gone
• Get hotdogs at Portillo's. There are no good hot dogs here. They GRILL them here. And put ketchup on them. (Mon horreur!)
• Visit my old church, and take Moose to see Timif and Petor, who he talks about all the time and misses as much as I do (maybe more)
• Eat deep dish pizza, drowning in cheese for maximum artery-clogging goodness
• Maybe see my cousins, especially Tracy who will have a new baby by then
• Go back to Portillo's or maybe Al's for an Italian beef. Dipped. Oh, goodness I'm drooling...

I just can't wait. It's going to be like waiting for Christmas. I can see the skyline already, as we descend into the city. We'll be arriving at night. I can already see the lights, and it's beautiful. Home. Oh, home. I miss you.

And when when we get back here to the Land of Mary, we'll have two days to do laundry and then we pack it all up again to head to the beach house for a week.

Then, before I know it, July will be over and it will be August and I will have survived one more long month since leaving everyone I've ever known behind in the Land of Lincoln. July is gonna be a cakewalk for me! Oh boy, do I ever love July*.

And then all I have to do is make it through August and most of September, and then it will be time for our Annual Big Vacation. We're going out to California to visit Disneyland and see my friend Michelle for her biiiiiiig birthday fiesta celebration. Moose is gonna be such a well-seasoned traveler by the end of the year. I even signed him up for his own frequent flyer number. I figured I gotta buy him a ticket so he might as well earn the points, right?

* And I love Mr. Felicia too, for being awesome and working hard so we can afford all these fun travel opportunities. And for being all "yeah I can survive just fine for a whole week without you" when I know he will be cryin' himself to sleep on his huge pilla every night without me, and won't know what to eat because I'm not around to feed him, and will probably forget to take his vitamins every day because I'm not there to put them in his hand. He's sweet. And generous. And compassionate about how much I miss my friends and my cousins and my hometown. When I proposed being gone for a week while he stays behind to work, he was all "Sure, baby. Go home for a week without me. That's way better than the bottle of wine you drink every night by yourself because you're sad and lonely. Airfare is cheaper than rehab." Well, he didn't actually say that, but I'm pretty sure he thought it. *shame* Anyways, I'm so excited that I'm actually going to fix him a nice dinner tonight to say thanks! I'm not such a prissy prissy princess that I'd ask for plane tickets AND dinner out all in the same day**.









**He can take me to dinner tomorrow.

Good morning, Baltimore

Yeah, I really like to title my blog posts with names of songs. I really like music.

So today I was driving to our first playgroup here since we moved, and my GPS took me the long way - at least what I assume was the long way, maybe it was just the way.

I passed Camden Yards, ESPN Zone, the Hard Rock, the Children's Museum and various other landmarks. Even through today's rainy weather, I was struck with one simple thought..."WOW. This city is beautiful." There really is quite a bit for me to explore and discover. I think I might get why Glen is so in love with his city.

Of course it's taken me a long time to get to the place emotionally where I even *can* consider things to explore. I still miss home desperately. I spent $100 today on frozen par baked deep dish pizzas to be FedEx'd to my house on dry ice. I miss home THAT much. I still have too many boxes lying around unpacked. They're mostly boxes that my pastor and his partner shared with us from their move. They make me sad to see lying around, because each time I see them I am struck with how much I miss my Timoth and my Pedro. And I still think of him as "my pastor" even though now he's technically not, he's just my friend and someone my heart treasures.

Since I haven't posted in over a month, I'll fill you in on the journey so far. Our drive here was a long one. After a very long afternoon loading the truck, we left Illinois 4 hours behind schedule. My wonderful friend Chris was there until we locked the door to our old house behind us. I really thought I was going to have a major cryfest saying goodbye to her, but I think I was too tired from the long day to cry. I drove the Jeep with Moose and Bella, Mr. drove the moving truck with Katie. I got behind the wheel, GPS'd up some directions and put my iPod on shuffle. Then I cried. The first song that came up was Lykke Li's "Possiblity". The first stanza: "There's a possiblity/there's a possiblity/all that I had was all I'm gon' get." Hello, tears. In Ohio, I was pulled over by state police. He wanted to tell me the light over my license plate was out. Cops scare the piss out of me, I could have done without that. As I wound through the mountains of Pennsylvania the following day, snow drifted down gently and I decided to give Facebook up for Lent. By the way, Facebook readers...I'm not cheating. Facebook automatically sucks up my blog posts to publish them there as notes. Yippee for you, you get to hear from me! Hooray for loopholes! I think I'm still honoring my quest to give up things that take my focus off of my Savior. And I think Jesus would be pleased...nay, impressed that I found a loophole. He was the King of Loopholes. He's the guy you want around when you run out of wine at your wedding reception, I'll tell ya that much. He knows the loophole around that. And don't even bother trying to crucify Him, He'll just come back to life three days later. Booya! Loophole FTW. Anyways, back to the point. If you read my blog, you know that I love me some snow and that snow always makes me think of one thing: grace. So I drove through the grace, and enjoyed some quiet time to refocus my mind on the transition ahead. There to here. IL to MD. Home to...the place I live now. *sigh*

And on the third day, we arrived here in Maryland at our new home. I had chatted up Moose about "the new house" so much, possibly too much. Every time we stopped for gas or to eat or to rest, he asked if we were at the new house. We were finally here. We parked, unloaded our inflatable mattresses and suitcases from the trip, and crashed out. The next day the movers came to help us unload boxes from the moving truck and they were fantastic. They were strong and quick and polite. I fixed them lunch, and wasn't at all surprised when they paused to say grace before eating. They were really great guys.

Over the past few weeks, I've unpacked and arranged and rearranged furniture. We all have been getting over a nasty cold and cough that we imported from Illinois with us. I've given up my Starbucks habit out of necessity. There is no Starbucks within a 5 mile radius of here, and the ones that are close enough to go to don't have drive throughs. So I pulled out my own espresso machine, used it to death (literally) and then bought an upgraded one online. I'm having a good time playing with it every day. I have mastered the latte, pull great shots of espresso on it, and really enjoy my afternoon macchiato. And also, now I feel stupid for spending $5 a cup at Starbucks every day sometimes several times a day when I could have been doing it at home much more frugally. We've settled into a nice little daily routine, and in time I'm sure that my life here will feel normal.

But right now it doesn't. I still feel like a foreigner here. I'm the only one in town who isn't still talking about The Snow. And I'm lonely. I miss my friends. I miss my family. I miss my life. I miss feeling like I am where I belong. I miss knowing how to get to the grocery store, the post office, the mall. I feel constantly lost and adrift in a sea of a million faces I don't know. I feel as if I've lost my footing in life. And it was in the middle of feeling like this, that a song came on the radio that made me cry. I loved it - it was *just* how I felt. So I tried to tag it with Shazam. Nothing. I recorded a sample of it with my phone and then Googled the lyrics...all crap leads. I finally resorted to emailing the sample to my friend Doug, who works with the music industry so he always knows everything about every new song and emerging artist. I knew Doug would know. He took a listen and figured it out within about 5 minutes, he's awesome like that.

"Your Hands" JJ Heller

I have unanswered prayers
I have trouble I wish wasn't there
And I have asked a thousand ways
That You would take my pain away
That You would take my pain away

I am trying to understand
How to walk this weary land
Make straight the paths that crooked lie
Oh Lord, before these feet of mine
Oh Lord, before these feet of mine

When my world is shaking
Heaven stands
When my heart is breaking
I never leave Your hands

When You walked upon the Earth
You healed the broken, lost, and hurt
I know You hate to see me cry
One day You will set all things right
Yea, one day You will set all things right

When my world is shaking
Heaven stands
When my heart is breaking
I never leave Your hands

Your hands
Your hands that shape the world
Are holding me, they hold me still
Your hands that shape the world
Are holding me, they hold me still

When my world is shaking
Heaven stands
When my heart is breaking
I never leave You when...

When my world is shaking
Heaven stands
When my heart is breaking
I never leave...
I never leave Your hands


And so that's where I am. I miss home, I think there might be something here for me and I'm willing to find it, but I miss the people I love. Laura said that God sprinkles the good people out over everywhere, and I'm trusting that she's right.

I wish my pizza would hurry up and get here. It's the only tiny taste of home I'll get until one of you comes out to visit me, or Southwest gives me a Ding! fare BWI to MDW. They keep trying to sell me a ticket to Rhode Island or Birmingham. Hi, I don't want to go there!

I want to go home.

Goodbye, Home.

After all my ponderings and working out how I felt about possibly relocating, going back over a YEAR ago (what a difference a year makes), I'm finally really moving. And it's not at all how I planned. The path I'm taking is not at all what I had in mind, not at all what I wanted, not at all where I thought I was going and I am struggling to make peace with it. I will not lie to you. I am absolutely brokenhearted to leave Chicagoland.

This is my home. This is where I was born and raised, and this is the climate I am accustomed to, and this is the traffic that I know, and these are the streets that I am familiar with. These are the surroundings that have borne witness to everything I have been, everything I am and everything I am becoming. Chicago has seen me through divorces, marriages and the birth of my beloved son. This is the city in which my mother and father met, courted, married and raised a family. This soil is where I am from. My roots here run deep.

This is the place where I met my Savior, and this is the place where I learned and grew. This is the place where I met my husband - the man who would try, and sometimes fail, but mostly try to make all my dreams come true. This is where we met and adopted our dogs, our sweet practice babies, and this is where I met nearly all the friends I have in life.

And now I'm leaving. And it's not by choice. That aforementioned husband landed a really great job across the country at a critical point in our tour of duty through Unemploymentland - right as our savings were nearly depleted, and just as his unemployment benefits ran out. We were in a position in which we couldn't say no. So for the past two months, he has been there working at his new job and searching for our next home while I have been here halfheartedly packing and waiting to see what he would find. Well, he found it. It really is a lovely place, well-maintained, with a big backyard for the dogs and a basement for our son's playroom, and plenty of sunny, window-filled rooms for us to fill with light and life. By all accounts, it is a great home and one I could be happy in. There's only one problem - it's not MY home. My home is here, cozy among my things. I am comfortable here, esconced in a lifetime of mementos and treasures that clutter my bookcases, drawers and shelves. I'm supposed to make my home "there" but right now it doesn't feel like "there" will ever be home. Because "there" will never be "here" and I have yet to discover how to reconcile that in my mind. I am leaving the place that created me for a place that is largely unknown. I've never been been to where I'm moving to, and I've only seen the house I'll be living in through pictures online. If a picture is worth a thousand words, why do these particular pictures leave me wondering so much?

Will I be happy there?
Will I make new friends?
Will there be other children on our street for my son to play with?
How far away is the grocery store?
Where is the library?
Can I ever find a church there that I love as much as I love our church here?
Can I ever find friends that I will love as much as the friends I have now?

I don't know. I don't know the answers to these, and a million other questions and fears that keep me up at night and paralyze me into distracted inactivity during the day. But I have to get over it and put all those emotions on the shelf (it probably would be better to pack them in a box, since I have to empty the shelves in my home) and soldier on.

Well, if there is one thing I know anything about, it's soldiering on. Because in Chicago, where I'm from, my home, that's what we do. It can snow 8" in one night and we still get out there in the morning, brush our cars off, and go about our day as if it were nothing. We can find out that our governor sells more seats than the AMC theater did on opening night of New Moon, and we just shake that dirt off our shoulders and go on. We face a windchill factor of -20 and we just bundle up and move on. We cheer for a football team and baseball teams who have a legacy of choking. Well, not me personally but, Chicagoans in general. That's just how we roll here.

So I guess that's how I'm gonna roll there.

But before I go, Chicago, please allow me to bid you a fond farewell. You with your CTA buses and trains, the Metra and the El, your horrific congestion on the Edens, the Kennedy, the Eisenhower, and all the other tollways named after Presidents. Goodbye to your historic, hallowed architecture that has always dazzled me. Goodbye to your gorgeous skyline that never fails to take my breath away. Goodbye to my beloved friends, my amazing family, my precious church that I will miss with all my heart every. single. day. Goodbye to your museums, stadiums, parks and malls that have been my home for 35 wonderful years. Goodbye to delicious deep dish pizza and drippy dipped Italian beefs and delectable beef hot dogs on poppy seed buns with pickles and mustard and onions and tomatoes and nuclear green relish and celery salt and sometimes sport peppers but never ketchup.

Goodbye, Home. I'm sorry I didn't appreciate you more when I was here. I will miss you terribly when I am gone, and will long for you deeply when I go away. You made me who I am, and you taught me so much. I mourn the loss of my childhood home. But you taught me how to be one tough little cookie, Chicago...and so for you, to honor you, and everything you have done for and meant to me, I'm going to try to be tough.

Right after I finish crying.