Here we are a few years later, out of Germany and living in Hawaii.  That was yet another move I never thought we would make.  It was the bottom of our list.  I wanted to be anywhere on the East Coast to be closer to family.  Instead, they send us even further away to an island in the Pacific.  I guess they are just keeping us on our toes.

Hawaii has rejuvenated my soul in so many ways.  There is such beauty here and oh how I love the sunshine.  We have an incredible support network and neighborhood.  Schools and jobs have been hard but overall, I feel like this has been my time to really rediscover who I am and where I want to be headed with my life and our family.  We have been here just over a year and a half and our time is coming to an end on the island.  My husband finishes up his job in four weeks but the Navy hasn’t told us yet when or where we will be headed next.  Not stressful at all….  Honestly, the waiting hasn’t been too bad.  I am not yet mentally ready to leave this beautiful island.  Some of the kids are though.  This is probably the least stressed I’ve been about a move overall, but the closer we get to a detachment date from his command, the more I feel the doubt and anxiety try to creep its way in.  I was walking down the street to pick my daughter up from the neighbors house tonight and I just wanted to cry.  I wanted to cry about yet another move, leaving more friends and family behind, another unknown, are we prepared mentally and financially for this?  Are we ever.  I could feel my heart rate increasing and the sadness starting to creep in.  I have so much to be thankful for and I know that, but sometimes I just wish this part was a little easier to stomach.  Even after almost twenty years of moving around, it’s still hard.

I listened to a sermon this week on Daniel 3.  The pastor talked about the three types of faith:

Saving Faith: (When you believe and accept what Jesus did for you on the cross: Eph. 2:8-9)

Trusting Faith: (When you believe God is able to work on your behalf; Daniel 3:17-18)

Gift of Faith (When you’ve been given a special ability to rely on God in difficult situations; 1 Cor. 12:9)

Where is my faith?  I’ve always been one to try and figure things out on my own.  I love to give help but have a hard time accepting it.  I tend to need to get to the point of sheer desperation before I lean into God.   Why do I do this to myself?  I think part of it is just human nature.  We want to be able to stand on our own two feet but the reality of it is that we weren’t designed to do that.  We need to ask for help when we need it.  We need to pray daily, build a relationship with our heavenly father so when these moments come that feel the peace of God’s love in the midst of the unknown and chaos.  We can take the walks when life feels overwhelming and be able to look around and see the wonder of God around us.  See it in the trees and feel his presence come over us as we call out for him.

Today I’ve been upgraded to just “beautiful mommy” but we all have to start somewhere.

Before we came to Germany and even more so since we’ve arrived, I’ve had such a tug on my heart to help others. I see people in need and my heart breaks. I know I can’t fix it all but I want to take them all home with me and help them. We were driving home the other day and we saw a man being arrested on the sidewalk near a stop light. He looked like a homeless man. He was dirty and looked so scared and just helpless. My heart broke. I wanted to get out of the car and just hug him and tell him it would be okay and that someone cared. The police were not being mean to him but he just looked defeated. I cried and began to pray for this man. There is so much need in our society and when things are going well in your own life and you’re comfortable, it’s easy to forget that it’s not the “norm.”

We drove on and went on with our day. We headed to a cafe for lunch. The kids played and I was watching the others around us, wondering how do I teach my kids this isn’t the “norm.” How do I foster a compassion in them to help others. To see people in need and want to help them? They’ve never known what is means to be in need. They’ve had their own kind of struggles that come with having a father in the military but at the end of the day their needs are met and they are shown love each day and know that their is a God who above all else loves them. So many people don’t have that. I am so grateful and feel beyond blessed to be where we are. This world is filled with so much hopelessness.

There was a couple in the coffee shop and they had a son with them who was in a wheel chair. He was older, maybe a late teen, young adult. It didn’t look like he could communicate with his parents. He would make some noise and his mother or father would stop what they were doing and feed him or offer him a drink, which they would have to pour in his mouth because he couldn’t do it himself. You could see their love for him, how they cared for him. I began to pray for them while we ate. That God would bless them and just be with them through their daily life.

Then I felt a real tug on my heart to buy their lunch for them. We were ready to leave and I went up to the waitress to tell her I wanted to pay for their food. This didn’t translate well in German so it took me talking to four different staff members until someone understood what I wanted to do. I told her not to tell them I did it, I paid and we left. We started walking down the street and were about a block away when I here a lady yell “wait!” and comes running towards up. She looks at me and says something in German which I didn’t understand and then just said “Thank you! Why?” and started to cry. I gave her a hug and started to cry too. She probably thought I was some crazy American. “I told her, no thank you!” and she hugged me for another minute then left. It seemed like such a small gesture from me, it was only a few $$, I just wanted them to know someone cared. I will always remember that moment. Making a difference in someone’s life doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. A small moment of your time showing someone that they are loved can make an impact. Plant a seed, water it and a garden will grow.

I’m going to continue to plant seeds in my children’s life, though my actions and encouraging them to make small gestures of love. I pray that they grow up with a desire to help others, to show compassion and be thankful for what they are given. Struggles are bound in come in life, but I pray they grow from their struggles and help others through what they’ve learned.
Sorry for my sappy rant.

Picture taken from http://www.grassrootsmarketingagency.com/lead-nurturing/

We’ve been visiting London these last few days and have been introduced to a little bear named Paddington.  With the new movie coming out based on him there are 50 statues of him around the city that have been placed to celebrate.  Paddington first appeared in children’s books in 1958 and was named after Paddington Station, which was near the authors home in London.  Bryce has been very excited with every statue we see and we picked up a few of his books to read at the Paddington Bear store at Paddington Station today.  He’s a little bear with good intentions but seems to get into occasional “pinch of trouble.”  Well, Bryce and him have quite a bit in common.  I love my son dearly but he has brought as many trials to my patience and my parenting, somedays it feels like more than all three of the girls combined.  He is such a smart boy and when he is in his routine he is great but outside of that, which has pretty much been this whole year, it’s been a challenge.  Today for example he threw a fit of monumental proportion inside of the worlds oldest toy store.  Thankfully it was crowded and loud enough that no one seemed to notice.  Still, it was pretty bad.  He later told me “mommy, I want to be good but sometimes, I just don’t know how.”  I told him it was my job to help him know how.  On the flip side of that, earlier that morning he comes running in our room telling me he needs love and gives me hugs and kisses on my cheek.  He tells me all the time how it’s his job to protect me and I’ll protect him.  He loves to hold my hand.  He melts my heart most days.

He likes to make up stories too with names of different animals and then he will tell you about the animals.  Earlier the same day on the train on the way into London, he was telling me about one of these animals.  It was called “crack holes” or something similar to it.  That coming out of a four year olds mouth may sound a little different and when he said it the lady sitting across from us, her eyes got big and she looked surprised.  He proceeds to tell me how they live in zoos and eat penguins.  That was fun.

His birthday was a last week and he got a new bath toy for his birthday and wanted to take a bath to play with it.  I told him he had to wait till after dinner.  His solution, two minutes later I hear him yelling from the top of the stairs, “I’m naked and I don’t know how it happened, can I take a bath now?”  Well, hopefully that will be the last time he ever says those words.

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We’ve managed to fumble our way through the first week and a half without any major incidents.  Germany is a beautiful country and for having as many people as they do the amount of farm land you see is rather surprising.  There are always lots of people out walking and riding bikes.  With the trees changing color driving from town to town is very enjoyable.

Speaking of driving, we broke down and rented a car.  I wouldn’t really call it a car, it’s more of a small bus, but with six people in the family it was the only car they had to fit us all.  She had originally told me it would be stick shift so I was pleasantly surprised it was an automatic.  It hangs about halfway over the sidewalk when it’s parked at our little temp house driveway.  I’ve managed to maneuver it through some pretty small streets, surprisingly without taking any mirrors off.  Though, I almost didn’t make it out of a parking garage today.  Because it’s so tall it won’t fit in most parking garages here.  We attempted to go to a little town called Esslingen today and being a German holiday I didn’t expect it to be busy.  I just wanted to walk around the town square and let the kids play at the park.  Well, after driving around for 30 mins looking for parking for the haus that is our rental car, we finally found a parking garage that had a height that the van would fit in.  The directions said to veer to the left for taller vehicles and smaller one’s to the right.  Well, we get past the booth to get the ticket and go to veer left and its gated off.  I’m not stuck between both lanes going into the parking garage and trying turn the van around to go up the exit ramp.  The kids were were commenting in the back, “Mom!  The car’s stuck!  What are we going to do!.”  Of course their’s a median in the middle of the ramp so I’m now wedged between the median, wall and taking up almost both ramps.  I just about have it turned around enough to get up the exit ramp and the wheel was stuck on the median.  The driver side of the van was hovering maybe two inches from a concrete pole and the front and rear sensors of the car are beeping at me telling me I’m too close to things.  I knew I had to get the tire over the corner of the median, I really didn’t have much of a choice.  I looked at Jon and told him,  I have to go up over the curve, it’ll either get us out of here or crash us into the wall in front of us.  I tapped the gas and by the grace of God we were on our way out.  Lesson of the day, if the destination is fairly close and has public transportation, take the train and leave the car.

I think I’ll be able to manage my Sienna just fine when it gets here.

We survived our first 24 hours here with sanity intact. The continental breakfast at the hotel was amazing. Meats, cheeses, breads, yogurts and oranges with a juicer to make your own orange juice. It was a welcomed change from pancakes and microwaved eggs. The walk to base was beautiful. Lots of leaves falling and large sidewalks which helps when you are walking with six people and people need to pass on bikes We probably walked over 5 miles today. There was a large playground on base the kids played at I met another spouse there who kindly answered my many questions. Jon tried to meet with someone at work but couldn’t get in the building because he didn’t have the right ID yet and we don’t have cell phones to call locally so we ended up searching for WiFi on base so he could call via Skype. At the recommendation of the lady I met at the playground we headed to Aldi to get prepaid SIM cards for our phones. We took the bus and when we went to get on we didn’t know how to pay the fair and the drive didn’t know English and we don’t know enough German yet so he just let us on without paying. We searched our German dictionary while we waited for the second bus to try and figure out how to ask how much to pay and on the bus back we tried our best and thankfully that drive spoke English and was kind enough to walk us through the process so we should be good to go next time. We stopped at a little burger stand for lunch and all the kids ended up trying sour kraut for the first time on hamburgers. They reluctantly ate it. Trying to activate SIM cards online on a German website is proving difficult. Jon can call from his phone now but it keeps wanting us to add credits to it which we need a German Bank account to do and the SIM card keeps telling us it’s locked when his phone goes into standby mode so we have to keep entering the pin. On the agenda today for the kids and I, open a German Bank Account and hopefully resolve the phone issue. Jon is at in processing so hopefully we will know today if base housing is available or if we need to look out on town. We have been searching on the economy just in case and aren’t coming up with much we can afford that will house all of us so it should be interesting.

My husband serves on a submarine in the United States Navy.  He’s been in the service since 1998 and we married in 1999 so I’ve been along for the whole journey.  We are getting ready to move again, our tenth move since we’ve been married and had been given verbal orders to head to Omaha.  He is deployed right now and yesterday our youngest daughter and I were out for a mommy daughter date and I checked me email and their is a message from our Detailer (the guy who decides where we go next) that we are headed to Germany.  My first reaction was disbelief and WHAT??  Germany??  We had talked about doing an overseas billet but this came out of no where.  I find as I get older the thought of moving is getting harder and harder to process.  Having four kids to move around with us also makes it a little more complicated, now having to worry about schools and their emotions surrounding the whole thing.

Life in the submarine community differs from other parts of the military for many reasons. One of the differences is communication while they are deployed.  You always see those videos and commercials online with families skyping with their deployed spouse or loved one or even getting an phone call while they are gone.  That is not the case for submarines.  He’s been gone for almost four months now and we’ve had communication with them for about three or four weeks of this whole patrol and by communication I mean email and not all of them always get through.  We’ve learned to number our emails so we know which one don’t make it and I can send them in a mail drop (if we have them).  Anyways, my point of sharing this information is when things like orders being changing or any major event there is no way to discuss it with them.  It’s more of “here’s what is happening, figure it out.”  I was in shock.  It’s exciting but a huge change.  I wrote hubby an email explaining what was going on, knowing I’m not going to get a response but he should know.  I went and pulled the kids out of school a little early to see what they thought and it came with mixed emotions,  two were excited, one was crying and one was too young to know any different.  It didn’t help that our move date had already been changed three times and we were expecting to stay put for another year and now we are leaving in four months.

Last night I’m pretty sure I had my first panic attack.  After getting all of the kids in bed, one of which was in my bed because she is running a fever and coughing I was so emotionally spent that I just wanted to go to sleep.  I’m laying down and my heart is racing thinking about all of the possibilities of things that can go wrong.  We are going to have to fly on a plane for 12 hours with four kids and what is the plane crashes and we all die.  What is we get there and someone kidnaps on the kids or we are killed by some crazy extremist group.  Oh and wait my husband has been floating around at the bottom of the ocean in a big metal tube for the last four months with a bunch of nuclear missiles, what if it gets a leak or someone messes up on watch and the boat sinks.  Nothing stressful right?  I’m just loosing my mind.  It probably wasn’t the best time to write an email to him.  I’m sending a followup today so he doesn’t think I’ve lost my mind.

When it comes down to it, we don’t have control of so much of our life.  We trudge on hoping and praying things work out and sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.  We’ve had our fair share of heartache, pain and moments of great joy but, isn’t that what life is about.  To praise God and be thankful in the moments of joy and also in the dark moments and times we feel like we just can’t do it anymore.  I tend to bottle things up and just keep moving forward because I’m afraid if I stop it will all fall apart.  This is good and bad.  I get a lot done and I manage to keep life running with four kids, being a military spouse and attempting to work a part time job (although sometimes not so smoothly).  But I have breaking points that come and it seems to hit me like a flood.

I believe that God gives us trials to build our character and to be able to witness to others through what we have learned. Sometimes I wish those trials weren’t so often but it reminds me I can’t do this on my own and I don’t know the day or the hour that will be my last on this earthly world and I need to trust in God and live each day as though it may be my last.  Don’t sweat the small stuff, I will probably continue to be late for all my kids sporting events (but we are always their before the game starts), my house will never be consistently clean but I have happy, mostly healthy kids and their is a heavenly father who is their to catch me, pick me up when I stumble like last night when I have those I can’t do this anymore moments.  Today the sun will rise and set and tomorrow will come.  What I choose to do the middle time is up to me.