Times to Cry and Times to Laugh

I have officially moved into my parents' new place. I still have a few small things at my old house but the bulk of my possessions are here now. It feels very surreal especially since my parents' new house is nothing short of incredible. They don't get their stuff moved in until Tuesday so for now, it's a little like I am living here alone. Picture Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. If this were a YWAM house in Maui, I could realistically fit about 200+ people here using a lot of bunk beds. I did once live with 11 other girls in a room the size of this new house's kitchen.

There is so much change going on right now that I can't deal with it all at once. My last day at school (without the kids) was on Friday and that doesn't even seem real yet. The other third grade teachers wrote me a nice card and gave me a little engraved notebook since I am always writing notes to myself on my hand. It was very thoughtful. The last day of school for teachers always involves a lot of cleaning and accounting for things you've been given throughout the year. It is a huge pain. Most teachers try to do as much of the closing out stuff as possible during the last week of school. I did some stuff but was hindered by an extreme case of procrastination coupled with denial about leaving. Lucky for me, I have made some great friends at school this year. After all their tasks were done, four of my teacher friends helped me finish my duties. It meant a lot to me that they would stay at school longer than they had to on the last day of school.

After school, we performed our usual post-school ritual- Wingstop and then the movie theater. We had been hanging out after school about once a week and I am really going to miss that. This year was much better than last year and I think having close friends at work made a big difference.

For my whole life, I have loved having groups of friends: Quiet Spring Lane friends, church youth group friends, high school friends, college friends, Wesley friends, Camp Cho-Yeh friends, Young Life friends, work friends, etc. I consider myself blessed to have a lot of quality friends but life changes have made them disperse throughout the U.S. and Canada. This makes it hard to hang out with them all at the same time. So, I really enjoyed having a fun group of friends at work. This is one change that is starting to sink in and I am not a fan of it.

Another change I don't think I have fully dealt with is my brother leaving for Iraq. It's hard to know how to feel or how to deal with it. It won't be over for a year so being upset or worrying excessively is not a healthy option. Right now I am using a combination of prayer and denial to get through it. When he gets to his final locale, I should be able to write him. That might make me feel more proactive about the situation.

As for good changes, my parents' new house is awesome and I am looking forward to going back to Maui to do the SBFM school. I anticipate learning a lot and enjoying times with old and new friends. I am trying to focus on these good changes and appropriately deal with the not-so-good ones.