Happy Unorthodox New Year

I'm awake this particular Monday morning feeling clear-headed, motivated, eager and excited.

The 'back to normal after the holidays' thing lagged one week for Ken and I, as we waited out the final inspections, making it possible to move in and set up the last bits of our lives over this past weekend.

Today feels like a gigantic, long-awaited new beginning.  A Monday morning of Monday mornings.  No, more like New Year's all over again, except on this rather arbitrary date of January 13.  And while we still have a fair bit of finessing to do to finish off the kitchen and feel out where to hang what on the walls, for the most part we are all moved in.  

I write it here, and walk around and look at the place, but, to be honest, I still can't quite believe it.  

And yet it's real.  Yes!  Here we are!  Finally!  And now....Time to sit down to the work before me in a more steady, concentrated way than I've been able to do in more than a month, or longer, if I count the whole big ordeal of moving.  I have been reminded, in very concrete terms, that there is a strong correlation between a consistent schedule within an ordered environment, and the amount of creativity and productivity I might hope to achieve.  

After the bogged down disruption of not just Christmas break, but the many months prior, it's very freeing to have my work space set up and know that's where it's going to stay put.  What a concept!  My brain is no longer consumed with unpacking and putting away.  I can stop wondering, because now I know what pieces of furniture fit where.  And it helps so much when you have a regular place to hang your keys, plonk your pen, put down your water bottle, recharge your phone, keep your Bible.

Happily, the absent-minded brain fog is lifting.  That limbo-locked-down feeling is fading.  At least I think it is, I hope it is.  I hope I can now catch up a bit on emails and other outstanding communications.  I'm really looking forward to finishing up a few projects, and getting a handle on the prep work for my February trip to Hot Springs.  There's the Haiti Dinner and Silent Auction to get ready for, just before that.  And some filing.  I have a packet I brought back from the cottage that's been waiting for this day when all my binders and files were ready and open to receive. 

All systems are go, and I can't wait to get going.  That was a long stint of disruption, and it makes the normal rhythms of life seem simply and delightfully oh so wonderful!

I pause here to make mention of the friends I know who are right now experiencing anything but the normal rhythms of life.  For lots of reasons and in different situations, this remains a disrupted Monday for them.  No new beginnings yet.  Maybe that's you.  Our transitional realities over the past six months, not to mention some fairly decent disruptions in the past, remind me, in fairly basic ways, that life is complex, and surprising, and quite easily upheaved.  

Prayers and hugs, and cheering you on until the day you too can have your own unorthodox new year.

And until then, a promise.  He is faithful.

"See, I am doing a new thing;

now it springs forth,

do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

and rivers in the dessert."

Isaiah 43:19