MYLESTONES: For This Very Distance

I've been living in limbo since September.

People ask me where Caed will go to school next year and I say, "It all depends."

I sign up for the local CSA only after I'm sure I can get my money back, you know, in case we move.

I skip registration for Maine's most popular 10k because I just don't know where we'll be.

I stop recycling boxes and instead stack them against the basement walls.

I listen as one by one, my husband's colleagues announce their post-residency plans months in advance. And when the conversation steers toward us, it runs me over. "Still nothing final," I muster.

And I'm just so tired. Tired of running a long-distance race with unmarked mileage. I tell Larry I'd rather know for sure I have six more miles to go, even though I'm winded and weary, than be on the cusp of the finish and have no idea when the race will ever end. He nods. He knows.

But this week a mile marker popped into view.
I read the email and go weak in the knees. Not so weak though, that I can't bound down the hall to throw my arms on his shoulders and half-shake, half-hug (and fully-startle) the poor guy. "You got it!! You got Cleveland!!"

I put my hands on my head, clasping fingers through fistfuls of hair. I do that, I think, when I'm walking it out at the end of the race. Or when I just can't believe what happened. Or in this case, both.

So the limbo is over. We'll tackle three more years of medical training at his top choice program in a faraway but familiar city. Near family. Near family. I didn't realize how much this would mean to me until it became a real possibility. I cried a half dozen times today alone, just imagining the three years my children will have with their cousins nearby. And now I can't even type "my sister" without spilling saltwater on the keyboard.

But it's not just knowing where we're at in the race that invigorates me. It's knowing with certainty that we are on the right course. It's looking back and seeing how God separately brought my husband and I to the same conclusion. It's reading in my journal how my heart traveled 180 degrees to get to this starting point. It's knowing He's been coaching me all this time for exactly this race, for this very distance, for such a time as this.

::

Is this gift too big and extraordinary to unwrap with Emily on Tuesday? Let's take a chance and link it up anyway.