Let me start by saying that I’m feeling better than I was at the end of last week, but I know I still have ups and downs ahead of me. Moving is hard. I forgot how hard it was last time, and the time before that . . . really, every time. These international moves are making our cross country moves feel like a piece of cake. Or maybe because I was younger then and had more energy/more flexibility and my sense of adventure hadn’t been satisfied yet so it felt more tolerable. Or I’m just remembering it better than it actually was.
I remember one time I called my dad crying when we arrived in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He told me to always keep my expectations low and I burst into tears all over again because I had, and it was even worse than that (a toll road to nowhere ending in pawn shops and strip joints was not an awesome introduction, but we grew to love it anyway).
I’ve always said I’d be willing to move wherever the job takes us and wherever Josh wants to go, but I’m not so sure about that these days. That shack in Iraq isn’t looking so appealing right now and I’m not feeling too resilient. The way to survive a life that I can’t control is to say that I’ll be OK with whatever happens. No need to get frustrated or mad because “God is in control.” Except that same inshallah attitude can easily slip into, “why bother getting out of bed? Nothing I do makes a difference anyway . . .”
I’m trying to make the days matter, but we are still in limbo. I’m so thankful that we didn’t have to go house hunting, but there have been some drawbacks to moving right into our home here. First off, I don’t have a purpose. When we arrived in Bahrain Josh started working right away, and my job was to find our house. We landed and I had a task to accomplish. It was a frustrating task, and it wasn’t easy, but it was a goal to achieve — something to work toward.
The other difference is that when you arrive and land in a hotel, you don’t expect to be able to get settled right away. It’s still part of the transition. Here I expected to move into our house and start operating as normal. But nothing is normal. I don’t have my stuff and I have loaner kitchen equipment so when I go to cook I’m trying to slice onions with a very dull knife on a flimsy cutting board and then I realize that I only have salt and pepper in the cupboard because I forgot to buy any seasoning or garlic at the store and where is my tzatziki seasoning that makes everything taste magical?
Over the weekend we bought a decent cutting board and a sharp knife (the pains of military moves — we always end up buying things we already own while waiting for our shipment to arrive) and I’m working on restocking my pantry so I can go back to cooking via inspiration from my cupboards. FYI, cornmeal is nowhere to be found and “corn flour” is actually corn starch. Thankful for Amazon to fill in the gaps. Baby steps.