It's Coming...

I don't mean to sound dramatic, but my heart feels like one giant gob of worry pudding. I've spent all winter trying to come terms with our impending move and now, any day now, we'll have to hike up our proverbial bootstraps and finally start putting this move back stateside into motion. We will know the day, we will know the where, and we will have to start working on the how, but I'm not sure I'm completely ready for any of it. I've been praying feverishly to know all these variables…for the Lord to prepare our hearts for this big change...but with every day that passes by, we get closer to the inevitable and I find myself still clinging tightly to our life here. I have cereal boxes with expiration dates stamped after our time in Germany is over. Even my food knows it's coming.
There are days I get sad. Real sad. I look at my inbox filled with travel bookings and trip itineraries and I die a bit inside. Over the next 4 months, those common inbox adventure confirmations will disappear, and I'll return to the life I knew pre-travel. Back to the life that was good, but lacked spice, spontaneity, and engulfing wonder. I had no idea I even wanted those things for myself, but now that I've tasted them, I'm addicted. I know what you're thinking, "You don't think you'll travel when you move back to the states?" My answer is yes. I DO think we'll travel. My gosh, I'll die if we don't. We're going to try our hardest to keep travel as a sub-priority, but we're positive it won't be as prevalent in our lives as it is right now...as it has been these last 3 years abroad. It can't be. We have other goals, other priorities we're equally as passionate about that have started needing our attention. One can't live the selfish, carefree life forever.
I think the loss of a life focused on travel is what I'm having the hardest time coming to terms with. Not the fact that I won't have a job (although that's a whole other beast of a worry), not the possibility of still living a 12 hour drive from our families (I don't love that, but I think we can handle that), not the idea of having to make new friends and get new doctors and new hair stylists in whatever town we end up in. These things I can handle. These things are challenges we endure every 3 years or so. Old hat, if you will. What's not come so easy is the thought of leaving behind the freedom of jaunting off to "X" destination on a whim. The excitement of throwing suitcases in the car and driving 2 hours to Belgium for a beer, just because. The thrill of combing through travel books on Sunday afternoons, planning our next great adventure as we listen to our towns' church bells ring in the distance. The memories D and I have made exploring Europe childless, completely on our own, and adapting to daily life in foreign country. All those perks of expat life make this transition HARD. We can still do some of those things in our soon-to-be life back stateside, but they'll be different. Jury's still out on whether they'll be good different or just different. It's all relative, though. We'll get used to our pre-travel life again (or at least that's what I keep telling myself). But what this experience abroad has given us has been so unique, so special, so good different from our life stateside, that I'm feeling rather lost about being forced to give it up in just 100 days or so.

There are so many challenging moments in expat life and travel...language barriers, learning new customs, driving new terrain, deciphering new foods, avoiding gypsies and evildoers (just to name a few)...but I'm finding that the hardest part of expat living and traveling is being forced to leave it. There's always been an expiration date on our time abroad. From the day we stepped foot in Germany, our time started ticking down. At first I couldn't hear the tick…now it's so loud I can hardly think straight. But that's the way it goes with the military. Many expats don't experience that certainty of expatriation's end. They stay however long they want...or however long they can stay in school or keep a job, renew their visas, or heck, even move to a new country. Lately I've been pretty envious of those kinds of expats. As much as I miss home and long for Target, my sweet puppy dog, and expansive parking lots, I can't hide the fact that even though we're not typical expats, I've developed a strong attachment to our expat way of living. It's a double edged sword; finding somewhere you feel happy, comfortable, and settled, but having to let it go not out of your own free will. I know we chose this life. I know I married a man who has a love for his country and a need to defend it. I know the day I said "I do" to him, the Air Force became my life, too. But no matter the circumstances that brought us into the expat world, I can still be sad about it ending far too soon. I'm sure every expat who's had to leave expat-dom can relate to that, at least.

So, I spend my days waiting for the other shoe to drop, that phone call from D that will start this whirlwind of change again. The musings I had in this post are still the same…only littered with more visceral panic, mourning, and melancholia. I feel weird telling my family I'm so excited to move home when I also feel so distraught about leaving Germany. What's weirder is that I can't even say home because we're not even really moving there! Layers of crazy cake, I tell ya. I've never understood the many facets of confusion more clearly than I do now. In fact, I'm not even entirely sure what I was hoping to achieve in writing this post. Transparency, maybe? To remember these feelings when I'm back in America scarfing down Krispy Kreme and Chick-Fil-A? I once loved and thrived in another way of living...mustn't forget that. I guess I'm writing this to tell you the condition of my heart through all this waiting, through all the thoughts of moving back to a life that once was familiar, but now seems hard to grab hold of with all my heart again. I'm happy, I'm sad...somedays, indifferent. The Air Force gave us this amazing, life changing blessing...one can only hope lightening will strike the same place twice.

Until then, we're still waiting. Prayers appreciated. xo