I'm home!!!!

I can't believe it! I am home and have been for a week now!  It's been a great week but very busy.  I got back into my kitchen on Tuesday and Wednesday to bake and cook again which made me feel excellent. I also got to spend the weekend at my dad and step-mom's house with my husband and puppy dogs.  I also was so happy to get back to our church on Sunday.  Honestly, it has been overwhelming at times, especially when I first got home.  It is definitely a transition.  But there is a lot going on right now and a lot coming up.  So I figure now is time for some updates...

On being home... So I have already mentioned being home is somewhat overwhelming.  Generally speaking, I try not to think about things too much.  I still have dreams that I am still in Afghanistan but that is pretty normal.  I am on a good sleep schedule, though I crash at the end of the day (always before 10, usually before 9) and wake up every day between 0530 and 0630.  But I am enjoying my time at home and love being back in my kitchen.  I also absolutely love my brand new car.  I tend to feel more exhausted than before I left, but I am sure that will turn.

On Lean Six Sigma...  it has come to a screeching halt.  I have tried contacting my instructor at least three times since leaving Afghanistan and haven't heard anything back.  So, I am hoping that some doors might open on the opportunity, but I have no clue what is going to happen and it is really frustrating.

Our new kitchen cabinets... sitting in our garage.

On current projects...  While I was gone, one of our kitchen cabinets sort of fell from the wall.  So, as I have mentioned before, we are redoing the kitchen.  Because of the wood floors, I plan on painting the cabinets instead of staining them.  And I think we are going to do a tile counter top.  But so far, we have just bought the new cabinets, dishwasher and microwave.  The plan is to try to get everything done before thanksgiving.  We are also getting our landscaping in the backyard done this week and I worked on our front yard a little bit last week.  I am hoping to clear the rest of the weeds and leaves in the front yard this week as well (maybe even the clean the gutters).  Early next year we are going to put up the green house and plant some bushes in the yard- but one thing at a time.

On being married...  I forgot how much I truly enjoy my husband's company.  It might seem weird, but there seems to be lots of little things that I forgot.  It feels so good to be back home with my best friend.  He took a couple of days off with me when I first got home.  I thought it would be weird being with him all the time, but it really hasn't been.  If anything, I hate it when he isn't around.  In the next few weeks, we are going to start planning out our time and what our new schedule is going to look like and I am really excited about that.  We are also trying to plan some personal goals for ourselves as a family and how we want to serve in our church, community, work and social lives.

On self-study...  Kevin and I are nearly done with our reading through the bible chronologically study.  We should be done in less than two weeks.  After we finish, I plan on reading through the new testament focusing on verses that pertain to love (God's love for us, our love for him and our love for each other).  On top of that, Kevin and I are going to start reading "100 days to intimacy" which is a book recommended to us by some in our church.  We are hoping this will help us to communicate well and reconnect as we make this next transition.  Plus, we want to be intentional in focusing on our marriage and family.

So yeah, there has been a lot going on in just a week and there is so much more not said.  But I will continue to give periodic updates as we continue to work on our new (feeling) life together.  (And here's a video link from me seeing my puppies for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYUCsxwKxtU)

Afghanistan: Number 25 (My last post from Afghanistan!)

Our transfer of authority ceremony

Alright everyone.  This is it.  I am going home.  Many of you have asked if I know when.  The answer to that is yes, but I cannot share it.  I can share after we have moved, but will not be able to tell you our next movement dates or times of anything like that.  Once I get back into the U.S. will be a different story, but for now, just know that within the next week or so, I will be home!  So here it is, my last post and the end of this part of my journey.

Playing volleyball in our free time...

Mental: I am having some frustrations in this department honestly.  I have not completed my second black belt project because I am still waiting to receive my data.  This is through no fault of my own and I can honestly say that I have no grand appreciation for the speed at which contractors move.  However, I did have an interview last Friday with a Brigadier General and have been officially endorsed to go to school and certify as a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt.  Unfortunately, we are still awaiting the exam results to go with it, so once we get the score key (a huge debacle because of the furlough), my qualifying exam will be scored and I will submit my packet.  Then there are about 5,000 more hurdles to go, but I plan on just taking them as they come.  Lord willing, I have a tremendous amount of potential in this area.

Physical: As you already now, I received the highest score possible on my Army Physical Fitness Exam just a couple of weeks ago (a 300).  My other goal of the six pack... well... I guess I will call it success.  I don't need to flex for it to be visible, but I am not seeing a lot of definition.  It's probably from all the ice cream I eat.  Regardless, I am at the lowest weight I have been in the last four years or so and am overall happy with the way I look and feel (even though I was also happy before).  I still intend to try to keep up the momentum when I get back and keep my run time down.

Can you tell I am not very good?

Financial: Well, my stocks have been up and down this week.  Both of my stocks have been near or surpassed their 52 week highs this week and then have dropped back down into a respectable range.  I am still planning on holding onto them.  I'm not the most financially savvy person I know, but both stocks are looking pretty strong and are significantly higher than what I bought them at.  Hopefully I don't forget about the too much once I am back stateside.

Seriously though, I had no idea  what I was doing.

Emotional:  This is a weird one in preparation for coming home.  People don't seem to understand that going home for a Soldier is in some ways, more difficult than leaving.  We train and prepare to leave but don't do much for coming back.  I haven't been alone or had a day off since I got here.  Going home, living with my husband, having to cook for myself and grocery shop and pick out clothes and drive myself around are all going to be transitions for me to get back into the hang of things.  I might never be alone here, but I haven't had to share my life with anybody either.  There is no one I had to talk to and take care of at the end of the day.  This is not to say at all that I am not completely excited to come home, because I really am, but it is a forewarning that this is a transition for me.  Getting back into a schedule will take time and patience.  On a somewhat similar note, I have been praying recently that God would help me fall more in love with my husband than I have ever been before.  This has been my constant pray over the last week and I can already feel it being answered.  I cannot wait to get back to my love, my groom, my companion, my husband.  To see him, to touch him, to be touched by him, to speak with him freely, to sleep next to him, to be with him... I cannot wait.

Spiritual: How good are you at being still? As in Psalm 46:10 "'Be still and know that I am God'..."  I am not very good at being still.  I have had issues being still my whole life.  Call it ADHD, call it hyperactive, call it over-thinking, over-analytical... Whatever name you want to give it. I don't think I have ever truly been still.  And honestly, I am not sure I know any women (or even men) who have told me they figured this one out.  We seem hard-wired for multi-tasking and calming chaos in our homes.  Our jobs and our lives seem to never demand stillness.  I used to even confuse stillness with laziness, but have since realized that it is actually the opposite.  But I digress.  Let me first say that my to do list for getting home is a mile long.  I am trying to get into school for my Lean Six Sigma Master Black belt, I am running against the clock to get a new job, the cabinets in our kitchen need redone, I want to build a green house and start a garden (some day down the road I want to have chickens and some day further after that, I want to try bee keeping), I want to do some minor landscaping in the back yard, plant some trees and bushes, buy a gun, get my concealed carry license, build new shelves in our closet, continue building a multi-media server for our house, create a planter outside my bay window, create cushions to sit in the bay window, potentially add a shower to our downstairs bathroom, build a fire pit, go to Illinois, go on vacation to Mexico, learn French and get LASIK.  Now, these are things I am thinking about for my next year home, but you can see that I have a lot of plans in front of me.  And I was nearly giddy trying to pick which one I wanted to tackle first (and when I say one, I mean a minimum of 3 because that's how I operate). I haven't had a day off on this deployment and if I am not running around doing something, I am sleeping or talking about the next thing I am working on.

So you can probably see now where the Holy Spirit intervened as a blessing to my dear husband (who was probably overwhelmed by my planning).  Still is not my forte.  Still is not watching t.v. or going for a walk.  It is literally still.  It is stopping the mind from wandering and planning, stopping my mouth from moving and just living at peace.  Others might call it meditation or clearing the mind, but really it's stillness.  And we don't really get any of this as a culture.  Stillness is most clear to me in my understanding of God's command to take a Sabbath.  Rest. Be still.  Remember God's still got this.  I used to think that still was passive, mostly because that helped justify my lack of being still.  Then I realized how active a task it is.  Ask a five year old (or me for that matter) to sit still.  See how long that lasts.  It is a rather arduous chore.  Better yet, I can't seem to truly clear my mind for more than a minute at a time.  But I bet if I worked on stillness that time would get longer.  If you read Psalm 46, you see that our God is very active.  It is in our stillness that we can see that it not us, but He who is running it all.  It is in our stillness that we come to know God.  Knowing God is being able to see Him, His heart, and His movement in our lives.  If I am always moving, I confuse myself into thinking that everything is my doing.  It's my "thanks God, but clearly I've got this one," kind of moments.  My activity causes me to get distracted by MY thoughts and MY actions and MY works in MY time.  Stillness is a time to reflect on GOD's thoughts and GOD's actions and GOD's works in GOD's time.  I am my own biggest distraction from God.  I create a whole world of distractions that I call "productive" "necessary" "useful" "important" etc.  So instead, when I get home, I am going to focus my time on learning to be still first and incorporating that into my Sabbath's and my every day life.  One thing I do know, if I can't figure out how to be still as a wife, I am really going to struggle to figure it out once we have kids.  I am ready to be still and know that He is God.