Learning to Dance in the Rain

So this post is deep and for introspection, very unlike all my others of updates and fun doings.  We do have fun and love it here, sometimes we miss so much and the challenges and sacrifices don't seem so great, and we wonder whether we will ever end up staying and calling a place our home but it's all how we look at it, right?

It's those times when you really see life in perspective that make you see how good it really is and wonder why you don't see it so clearly all the time.  Perhaps it's how I realize I have been until this moment -in a whirlwind of life - while striving to not just let things fall at us - some things just kind of do all fall together, much good and some not so.  Amidst all that our goals, the things we strive and pray for come together as well with God's loving way.

It is amazing Georg and I will be married 4 years in September and have known each other over 8 years, I guess our story already shows so much about love, the joys and trials and time, much prayer hope and faith.  A little reflection of the past few years - moves and job and now school, yearning for a baby, realizing we were pregnant and then that something was wrong, then we were pregnant and wondering will everything be ok, being so sick and tired through it all, it's a girl, then that amazingly long birth, a beautiful baby girl now fully depending on me to care for, the beauty of it all and the demands, colicky, reflux and ever so active, always learning her needs, and look what she has become.  We know that through it all we are just as in love as we always were and that we have the same dreams and hopes and desires we did when we were young and having those first butterflies in our hearts for each other.

Sometimes the hope for all those dreams, and perspectives get lost in those day to day things and we don't see things clearly for how they really are and will be.  I guess this whirlwind of life as always has taken me by surprise and I realize God really has answered our prayers and done his beautiful work.  I am seeing it more clearly and I understand how lately so much has seemed so hard, giving everything for our darling girl, and leaving our things and lives in a way behind for a new and everyday unknown one, and making it so hard to see all the good that's right in my reach.  It is too easy sometimes instead to see, I am so tired, here I am cleaning the house, the dishes for yet another time, changing diapers, taking out the trash, still not sleeping through the night, looking for a way to improve oneself and see worth as a mother and wife, with hopes and dreams to pursue that I can not see now, trying to feel at home, missing and knowing the load my love carries with his studies, wondering if we will ever have a place to call our home, where we even want that to be, missing America and loving Germany at the same time.

I know as it has in the past that all will come together, everyday I get to see Ella, and learn more about who she really is, and embrace the moments we get to have Georg, (Papa) home, we share in the joys of life and the challenges, but they are all good for us & can lift us and bring us closer, and make us better, we just have to see them for what they are.  I love this quote I had before we moved here - "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to Dance in the rain."  I feel like I am good with that some days but hope I can remember that more often than not.  I am excited for tomorrow, Ella will wake up, hopefully not till the morning and when she does, I will be happy to start a new day with her (always better if well rested), perhaps we can be quiet enough to let Papa sleep in, who needs it so much, for all he does, and though he has things to do, there are things we could worry and stress about, vacuuming, dishes, laundry, cooking that all will need to be done, there's love and joy that can be had in it all, much good and fun and beauty to see and some fun to be had in it all, maybe some rain to Dance in after all or better yet some sun rays to bask in.

I don't know what it is sometimes movies, perhaps when I slow down enough, really send me into beautiful reflection and introspection, much without having too much to do with the movie.  I remember Marley & Me did so, and just now The Switch - Umständlich Verliebt (better titled in German I think - Awkward Love), funny they are both Jennifer Aniston films.