I’m in the midst of feeling rather overwhelmed in my job right now. We’re less than two weeks from Rally Day (beginning of the new Sunday school year) and I feel pretty unsettled about a lot of it. And I know that a big reason why is how unsettled my life feels. I think it’s been hard to find a sense of balance for a while now. I’ve tried to put a finger on when it all began, and truth be told I think it was when we left New York. Huh, it’s actually been pretty much since I was officially certified to be a DCE (but I’m not rostered. If you need me to explain the distinction, I will, just let me know). That was back in the fall of 2008. We took this extra-long car trip from New York through Wisconsin to Minnesota for my final interview/certification. I finished that and we drove out to see my sister and her family in South Dakota. Stayed with them for a brief vacation, then traveled the long journey back to New York.

Shortly after that, my husband interviewed with a church in Ohio. When we went for the in-person interview, we knew God was leading us there. But the process was a little slower and the call actually didn’t come until mid-November. By that point we felt that we had to stay put through Christmas for the sake of the New York church. Then we moved. Just about the time we started to feel settled about the fall of 2009, things fell apart in Ohio (look back through the blog archives in 2009-2010 though the details are mostly confidential). We spent the rest of that winter in a holding pattern and finally were led to Texas in the spring of 2010. We moved, got settled, and I immediately started working for our school that summer. End of summer came and my sister had broken her pelvis, so I went up north to help with her kids. While there, I found out I was pregnant. Came home, and a month or two later Mark (my brother-in-law) came down to get treatment at the medical center. I started working at the church. Then my sister and her kids followed, and they all lived with us until January.

One month after they got into their own place, I ended up in the hospital on bedrest. Then Samantha was born, we had her home and healthy for a few short weeks, and she got sick. Now it’s only been a little over a month since she died, and I am so out of sorts in so many ways. No wonder.

And how could I have guessed that our journey would ever land us here? I have a black dress hanging in my closet that I wore to the funeral. I actually bought it off a clearance rack in Ohio thinking I might wear it at Christmas. This was in the fall of 2009. If someone had told me that day that the first time I would wear the dress would be in Texas for my daughter’s funeral, I would have shaken my head and told them they were crazy. Yet that is what happened. We don’t see where the path leads, and I think that’s a good thing. It just makes it hard to be motivated to plan much when you know that your plan is really Plan B.