punctuation marks from hell

Sometimes, I like to blame things on my period.

It's easier that admitting that sometimes I just want what I want and then folding my arms, sticking out my bottom lip, and pouting in the corner.

My mom was supposed to come up this weekend for the first time since Lilah was born. Instead, she's going three hours further away from me to see my nephew be born.

Knowing she isn't going to be here, and knowing that I'm not going to be with my sister makes me cry like a baby.

It will never stop hurting that I don't get to live near my family. No matter if I understand it or not.

sometimes it makes sense

Four and a half years ago when I moved to Metro Detroit, it was very begrudgingly.

I made a deal with God that Jon and I would move back to Indiana in one year, at most.

I didn't even change my cell phone number.

Year one came and went, and the opportunity to return home didn't present itself. No matter how hard we tried to force it.

By the end of year two, we had Lilah, and we were still fighting tooth-and-nail to get back to the Hoosier state. Jon had three companies interview him, fall in love with him, promise him the world, and then slowly disappear from the radar. It was almost science fiction the way that each company independent of one another simply cut off all conversations with us, one even after paying Jon close to five hundred dollars in traveling expenses.

We (I) reluctantly (kicking, screaming, and cursing) gave up and made our home here.

But Jon wasn't happy with his job. It constantly took him away from Lilah and me, sometimes a month at a time. He kept talking with his company about transferring departments, but there was no place for him to go.

Two years later...

Elkhart, the place we were trying so hard to return to, has the highest unemployment rate in the country. It is the RV capital of the entire world, and for a trillion reasons, no one is buying mobile homes at the moment. The scene in my home town is pretty dismal. Obama has been there twice in mere months to address its economy.

Also...

Jon, although in the auto industry, has been mostly spared from all of the fallout in recent months. He was promoted from his former position and placed into a new one... One which as of a few weeks ago has absorbed so much work into it that they will have to hire more help.

At the same time...

We have always rented apartments since we got married. We talked about buying a condo a few years ago, but we wanted to mobility if ever we got to go back to Indiana. When our lease is up this year, we will have enough to put down on a house. A house, which thanks to the current financial situation in America, we could have never afforded before.

I don't know why we have been spared extreme hardship during this bleak time. It is most certainly not because we have deserved it, earned it, or been faithful enough to "achieve" it.

It is so completely fall-on-my-knees humbling though, that most times, I can hardly take it.

I think back to all those tearful nights when I poured my heart out to God about why I didn't understand why he wouldn't let me go back home. I remember the pain, the mourning I went through (and still do to some extent) in being away from my family, my home.

And all that time, I couldn't hear God's small voice telling me to trust Him. That His plan was better than mine. That someday, I might see that he was protecting my new little family from great hardship.

Not that hardship is only a consequence of disobedience - no! I would say, more often, it's a natural wordly consequence of being obedient. But in this case, when I reflect upon all that has transpired in the past few years... I see God's fingerprints all over all of it.

And I just simply couldn't have before. I knew they were there, but I couldn't see them amidst all of my anger, pain, and sadness.

I know that many people are currently in the thick of where we were a few years ago. I hope that my little story might encourage them to be faithful in these times.

He knows what He's doing.