The Edge [of all] Journeys

Yesterday I helped dig a grave out in a field’s corner at the farm where we’re staying. That was a first for me, and a  very sobering and reflective endeavor on many levels. There we laid to rest the body of Barucha – a wise and strong spiritual grandmother to many – she didn’t need it any more. YHWH delivered her spirit from a three and a half year struggle with cancer, and she is now dancing in the Heavens once again.

As her husband shoveled the first few scoops of dirt onto the body in the grave, I put a rams horn to my lips and sounded a long steady blast that held strong until my breath collapsed. It was a wail of mourning and a victory shout all at once. The victory is this: she trusted and served her King – Yahushua the Messiah – faithfully until the end and will be raised incorruptible in the last Day.

My last memory of Barucha – the most vivid one – was etched in place on Day 9 (just 2 days before she passed away). She was lying there on her hospital bed in a lot of discomfort, holding my 6-month old daughter’s tiny little hands, delighting in baby Joy who was just sucking away on her finger. I remember feeling the profound weight of the differences and similarities colliding in such a small space between the two of them. Here were two Daughters of Tsyion that – by all physical appearances – were at completely opposite ends of life. And yet, they both had such a strong ember of life burning in each of their spirits that they could connect at precisely the same spot beyond human comprehension.

I have been very thankful that this was my children’s first firsthand exposure to death – as part of a bigger spiritual family in Barucha’s immediate family and others here who understand that death is part of life – that it is a transition, not an ending – that it is not something to be feared or avoided in conversation or treated as some strange thing.

I believe that death – as with anything in life – should be faced squarely, head on, dealt with as best anyone can, and then left behind. Barucha did this with all her might, and her family carries on in the same way.

The sun has been out and the children have been outside. If it’s not pouring out, they want to be out the door as soon as they have their clothes on and some food in their bellies. Fresh air makes happy kids. The sky has been very clear the last couple of nights and the constallations are very visible and breathtaking from where we are. Bennah and I went for a quick run tonight to burn off some energy and get one last breath of cool air in our lungs and did some star gazing before bed. Zach turned the big 4 today and picked out a special dinner and desert that we shared with all our friends here.

Something that we are going to get to is doing our laundry at a laundromat. This can be a wonderful adventure, depending on how you look at it. It takes up most the day, since we try to get other errands done as well while we are out and about. Today it took 2 hours to wash out clothes. It is quite an operation. We had two bins of clothes, a big book bag full of things to do (books to read, school workbooks, toys, coloring stuff, snacks) and 5 kids. The laundromat we found was clean and bright, and had a few college students and an elderly lady who really got a kick out of our kids. After about an hour and 15 minutes, they were getting bored and started using the laundry carts as go carts and bumper cars. For boys, everything can become something to climb on, ride in or turn over become something else. I was exhausted at the end from reigning them in and teaching the boys how to respect other people’s propety, keeping Joy happy and occupied and stopping Zach from drying himself in the big industrial size dryers. But we got our laundry done and the kids had fun. By the end though, the kids were tired and hungry and grumpy. As we were leaving we got a sympathetic grin from the old lady.

We are seriously thinking about buying a portable washing machine that would fit in our bathtub. It’s convenient, but adds weight and takes up valuable space. Laundromats can become a fun family outing, but take up time and cost a lot of money.

What a day. It rained all day. It was too cold to really get any fresh air, so we were pretty much cooped up for the day. And it seemed like a completely unorganized, frustrating, chaotic day. Andrew and I both had plans to do some work today, the kids needed to do some school, meals had to be made, kids needed physical activity, all which seemed to happen at once and then none of it happened successfully. Still a bit run down and tired, there were some nuclear melt-downs, arguments, teasing, more fits, hungry grumpies, and still more challenges which I have completely forgotten now that it is the end of the day and all the days events are a blur. I do remember trying to feed the kids left-over black bean burgers for lunch on the floor because Andrew had taken over the whole dining room table as his office space. It’s only temporary, but it’s very inconvenient. I was stepping over kids and plates and books and toys and boxes if I wanted to get anywhere.

I’m learning that in a small space, everything has to be very intentional. Everything must have it’s own place and must be there for a reason. Nothing can be half-hazard. It’s fun in some ways to figure out how to organize everything to make life easier, but if anything is out of place, suddenly, it’s a mess. In a small space, a little mess, is a big mess. A few dirty dishes becomes an immediate chore that needs to be done to free up more space. A little bit of clutter is a huge deal. Not liking clutter and messes in particular (I’m not a clean freak, but I do like things tidy), this experience is definitely stretching me. I’m going to have to get used to a more cluttered lifestyle. With 7 people in about a 300 square foot space, things are bound to get messy and cluttered. It would help things a bit, if we got rid of even more things, which I am in the process of doing. I organized our bedroom a bit more tonight and emptied out a few more boxes and found new practical homes for things. I also threw out a few more things. I am coming across things and thinking to myself, “now, why on earth did I ever want to keep that?” or “this just doesn’t go in this new space.” More purging.

After lunch, after a few naps, things quieted down and Reayah started worshipping. We all joined in for a bit, and I was thankful for this moment of peace and mental re-calibration. I am always reminding myself (or my heavenly Father is reminding me) to have a worshipful heart in every moment, no matter what is happening. This can seem almost impossible, when you’re trying to put a fussy baby to sleep, force feeding black bean burgers to another, taking another to go potty, and trying to motivate two unmotivated kids in their school work. It can not happen on my own strength. Only with YHWH’s grace can I do this. When I decide, in my frustration and exhaustion, to lift my eyes up to where my help comes from, and say a prayer of thanks or even force a song of praise out of my lips, things get lighter and the rain that is beating down on our awning outside sounds so beautiful and soothing, like a simple symphony and I am so thankful for a warm cozy home, my amazing husband and wonderful children. Another day is done and my heart is full.

It’s pretty windy tonight and will probably rain. Andrew is out rolling up the awning and putting our things away. I’m making tea and we are just about the settle down and get cozy, looking at campgrounds close to Winnipeg, Canada (our next destination). We had our first meal outside today. It was fun and I think we will be eating outside mostly. Clean up is much easier. Black bean burgers with chips, salsa, carrots and chocolate chip cookies for desert. The kids and I are a bit run down. It has been an intense first week. They have been real troopers and have adjusted very well. There is so much to explore here (as you can tell by the great pictures in our last post). Bed time has been pretty effortless, since they are usually exhausted by the end of the day from all the fresh air and sunshine.

The day went moderately well: I watched the rest of “The Pirates who Don’t do Anything”  with the kids, the rain stopped, Renee took the kids to the library in town which freed up some valuable project time, I went over to meet our friend’s neighbor to offer replacing the bike ramp / board my son and his friend broke trying to use it as a trampoline, I hauled another load of stuff to get rid of out of the trailer, had a quick but productive talk with Joe, put the chicken in the oven for dinner, set up the computer and flat screen that serves as one of my development machines and doubles as a large picture frame with 40,000 of mine and my dad’s photos (including scans) parading in an endless random slide-show, figured out how to pull down the awning, immediately saw that it had been poorly cared for by the original owners which led to a massive soap-broom-and-hose scrub down session, and set up the exercise bouncer (one of our kids’ favorite things back home was our huge trampoline, and we figured with all the new trailer rules – no running inside, no jumping inside, no bouncing on the bed, etc – they should at least have something they can bounce on rain or shine… and hopefully prevent breaking any further boards-that-are-NOT-trampolines).

And that’s where the day got dicey.

In our first bit of RV life drama, our black water tank clogged up. For those thinking, “big deal…” or “what the heck is black water… is that some sci fi thing like dark matter or something?” Well, the interesting thing about modern conveniences like city water and sewage is that they make us almost completely oblivious to the amount of bodily wastes we each generate on a daily basis. Not so in an RV. One has the blessed opportunity to become intimately aware of the byproducts of such gratifying endeavors as eating.

So, when things stopped disappearing down the toilet, I knew we had a problem. Hmmm. Where to start? The internet of course. After a wee bit of research – the kind one always wishes they had done before the information is actually needed, I launched into action with some great helpers. The scene was hilarious, and now I cannot believe I neglected to have Renee catch some shots, but let me paint a mental picture for you: Imagine me in the bathroom wearing latex gloves pushing a garden hose (metal end cut off) down the toilet as far as I can and holding the flush lever open with my toes while my 3 year old son tries to shine a maglight down the hole so I can see if any progress is actually being made and my wife – who is outside – communicates with me via speaker phone (cell phone to cell phone) so I can have her turn the water supply on and off and pull this lever and push that lever as necessary. And that really about sums it up.

Of course, that was after several other… um… less invasive solutions failed in the attempt. In the end, I think we are on the path to recovery albeit not quite out of the woods just yet. There is still quite a bit of black water in that black water tank. I’ve poured a couple bottles with very scary warning labels down the toilet, and added a bunch of extra water, and I’m hoping things will be sufficiently liquefied by morning to get a clean dump. What an paradoxical notion.

Now, I’m just sitting here at 10:30pm sipping wine, eating chicken, thinking about all the other things I would have liked to have gotten done tonight, and blogging about it. Life has never been better. I know you think I’m crazy, but this is exactly why we hit the road in the first place – well, one of the reasons at least – to face life head on and force confrontations with challenges that we’d otherwise never even know are out there.

And what happens in the process? Why even bother? Because it changes us, teaches us, refines us, sharpens us, stretches us, enlivens us. YHWH uses all of these mundane and even, in some cases, gross / disturbing / painful experiences to strengthen us.

The e-silence is broken! I have finally rescued the laptop from the truck. I think this is the longest I have gone without  being connected in quite some time… In fact, it has been rather quite nice. I was <gasp> reticent, in fact, to jack back in. But I figured a quick recap was in order… for the record. And all the lovely Facebook comments / responses really inspired me to get an update out there – thank you ALL for the friendship and kind thoughts.

We didn’t actually end up pulling out until 9pm, Saturday, April 11th. It truly was the endless day. It took an hour or so to hitch up because the weight bottomed out on the truck further than it had when I blocked it up last time. Basically I couldn’t pull the tongue jack in far enough to get all the weight on the truck as it was still resting on the blocks as well. So, I had to use jack stands, pull the tongue jack all the way in, remove s few blocks, jack back up off the stands, remove stands, jack back down onto truck, there. I know you find that all incredibly interesting.

The trailer was HEAVY and we weaved and bobbed a mile or so to the gas station for a precarious fill-up and the obligatory bathroom stops even though EVERYONE had gone before we left. And then we prayed and gave our trip to YHWH. There were many uncertainties yet: would the truck handle all the weight we had dumped into the trailer? Would it pull us all over teh road? Would I ge ttoo tired to continue? And so on… It was immensely helpful to take all those questions and throw them into Trust.

9:40pm actually finally on the road. Puttered along at 50 mph average to keep all the gauges happy. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower depending on the terrain.

11:00pm-ish it was obvious I was physically incapable of staying awake. For those who have braved the noble road with me, you will recognize immediately that this is quite uncharacteristic. I have driven solo from Colorado to Virginia straight through. I have driven solo from the coast of Louisiana to Canada straight through. But there was no way I was going to safely make the 4 hour cruise after the delightful schedule we had been keeping. With no rest areas or Walmarts anywhere in GPS sight, I thought at least a beverage was in order. Sheetz gas station turned out to be very hospitable and gracious hosts and I caught a couple winks between various kids waking up grumpy.

1:30am-ish back on the road. I hit equilibrium at 2am on the dot. There is this Place on the Road that I am quite fond of. It is a Place of perfect awareness that fatigue cannot touch. It is a Place of Perpetual Motion. It is a Place of Grace and Life where every physical and spiritual sense is completely alive. It certainly helped that I stumbled upon an amazing radio show to provide the soundtrack: http://www.starsend.org/broadcast.html – that Place on the Road always demands a soundtrack, and I tuned in right before 2am when Arc was up on the Playlist. Now, I’m the kind of person who believes that everything happens for a reason – for a Purpose – and, though I also realize that one can read too much into things as well, I find immensely curious if not downright cool that the inaugural song of the trip was by a group called Arc. The layers of puns and meanings there are numerous, but the more obvious ones revolve around feeling a bit like  we’re here now in our own little ark riding along atop a sea of circumstance over which we have incomplete control.

4am we finally pulled into the driveway on the Farm… after 2 puke incidents (there has been something going around), and 2 stops at the very end to reattach each weight distribution bar (something screwy going on there on certain angle turns or something).

The last couple days have been full of fellowship, realization (as the surreal slowly gives way to the uberreal), rest (although not quite as much as I’d like yet, because…), and unpacking / sorting / organizing. It might sound funny, be we really do have a lot of unpacking to do. We’re now in the move in phase: i.e. how can we possibly organize everything so that it looks like things are not cluttered. It is so much fun.

We’re parked by a pond. We have power, water, and sewer connections. The kids have a Farm to explore. Renee and I already have a long to-do list to streamline this new life. Photos and GPS data will get posted when I get around to it. And I should have gone to bed 3 hours ago 🙂 Some things change hard. We are feeling so blessed!