Going.... home?

Les and AugDog and I went on an epic whirl-wind road trip back to Chicago this weekend. The drives were brutal (spiders in the car, flash flood downpours, Aug having seizures, bathroom emergencies, and I broke out in scalp-to-foot hives), and the time in IL way too short. I slept very little and cried a whole lot.

Friends asked me how the job is going, my answer always spilled out confession-style, even if I tried to begin diplomatically. Inevitably I ended up in tears.

It's not what I thought. Not what we uprooted and moved across the country for. I don't like what I am doing. I'm trying to be hopeful that things will improve. There are bits of hope. Organizational culture doesn't shift over night...

We don't really have any friends yet, we haven't found a church we can stomach  like, and the South is so very different from Chicago. So. Different.

And it was healing and refreshing to sink into so many hugging arms this weekend and admit that to people who know and love me. Love us. To reply to the "How is North Carolina?!? How is the job!?!" with clutched sobs and half-smiles. Just to be known, and understood, and missed and welcomed back for a brief respite.

We don't hate it here. I'm pretty content, in fact, at the kitchen table right now, sipping a hard cider and musing over my little porch garden. I'm not miserable, and neither is Les. And even though we're feeling a bit isolated and home sick right now, neither of us regret the move. I am, however, warming quickly to the notion that this cross-country uprooting may have had little to do with the job and more to do with some kind of new trajectory that has yet to reveal itself clearly. Maybe it is just to shake us up our of our routines and comforts and separate lives and friends and show us a new way.

If I'm having a particularly gut-churning day at work and decide to indulge in some musing, I wonder whether this second, more painful stint with Habitat is going to end up shoving me into the decision to get out of the Non Profit biz all together. As I nuzzled into some ridiculous coral peonies at the wedding on Saturday, I daydreamed about finally "doing the florist thing for real". I may have even imagined a little studio work shop. There may have been a kiddo crawling around on the floor with AugDog in that flower steeped dream.

So yeah. Why are we down here? What are we supposed to be learning? Doing? Trying? What is God trying to show us or teach us? We haven't figured that out yet.

On the drive from Chicago back to Raleigh, I realized that I had semi-intentionally avoided referring to either Chicago or Raleigh as "home" all weekend. I wasn't "coming home" or "going home" or "returning home" or "leaving home". We were going from Raleigh to Chicago and then back. I thought about all that a lot harder on the last few hours of the drive yesterday, when I rolled around the fact that in a couple of months, the family house in Rockford will (hopefully?) be sold, and with it my anchor.

No home base.

So maybe maybe maybe all this where, what, why questioning has a bit sharper edge than it needs to have. People move all the time. Childhood homes are sold. Grown ups make career changes, question decisions, change their minds. People move back. Or somewhere close to back.

If I came to any conclusions this weekend, it is that I HAVE PEOPLE. Lots of people. Everywhere. And I carry them around with me. Some of those people happen not to live on this earth any more, and some of them live just a little too far away for my taste. Les is (thankfully) pretty much stuck with me. But I have people, and when I am with any of them, I am home.