We've been in Maine now for two years and almost two months.  Wow... to me, that seems like a long time.  So much life has been lived here... and I guess I'm sitting here on this quiet afternoon, reflecting on that.

You know, when you make as big of a move as we did, you try to prepare for it... I did.  I talked about it and talked and talked and talked... and I prayed and prayed (probably talked more than I prayed!)... I even went to counseling and tried to work through how I felt about the upcoming transition.

But you know what?... life is kind of big.  And I've learned that you can't always prepare yourself for what's coming... because you just don't know.  So there I was with my little prepared self and we moved... and a few months went by and life just came... like a tsunami.  There was the normal "adjustment" stuff, which I had tried to prepare for and do my best.  But then there was also incredible hardship, death... and it knocked me off my feet and plowed me on to the ground.

And here I am... sometimes still trying to figure out if I've stood up... or am I still laying flat on the ground?  Maybe it depends on the day.  I guess grief is like that... you lose precious things that you had and loved, and precious things that you haven't had but thought you'd have... and you're left with empty hands and a confused heart.  For me, it takes time... more than I thought... to sort through the debris after a tsunami.

And when you're new to a place, like we are, you don't know how or who to reach out to for help.  Who is our community?  Well, I guess I don't know for sure.  Maybe that community is still being formed.  I think it takes time in this part of the country for community to happen... maybe that's true of any part of the country.  But we've walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and when I would normally be grabbing on desperately to family and friends, Ben and I have kind of looked at each other and grabbed on to each other.  Maybe we'll find that we're stronger, sewn together because of what we've walked through together.  But honestly, I would have loved for my old friends and family to be sitting on my couch with me too.

There's been a line that has popped up in my head a lot during the past two years. I think I heard it in a song... but I was reading the Psalms yesterday, and wow, there it was.  I can't get it out of my head.  It's actually in the Bible... how beautiful.

Who is like the LORD our God, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth?  He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes, with the princes of their people.  He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children.  ~Psalm 113

When I feel like I've lived the past two years in sort of a feeling of oblivion, what this tells me is that I have been seen and I have been known.  The LORD, He raises the poor, He lifts the needy, seats them with princes, settles the barren woman as a happy mother.  I don't know what this particularly will mean in my life... there is so much of my story that I don't know yet... but the LORD sees, knows, raises, lifts, seats, and settles.  These are good things... and how this is good news to me.