A place for us

I should be walking, or ellipticaling, or weight lifting.

But instead I am sitting on the floor of the gym facing the back side of an older gentleman on a workout bike watching his feet go round and round.

Proof.

But when you are overwhelmed and inspiration strikes, and you happen to be alone with your son in childcare, and you have the WordPress app on your iPhone–which just happens to work because your gym is also a wifi hotspot–you take the time to sit down on your butt on the side of the track and write a blog post.

While I was writing that last paragraph, my iPod died. But before it did, it was playing “There’s a Place For Us” (from West Side Story)…the Charlotte Church and Josh Groban version. I skipped it (like I always do because it’s been several years since I went through my Charlotte Church phase), then immediately back tracked. Because in the split second before the next song started playing I realized that I needed to hear it.

The last few days have been overwhelming. Weeks really.

My husband is now into the applying-and-interviewing-for-jobs stage of ETSing. Which means I’m doing a lot of research into potential living areas.

I think I could be accused of having an affair with Google, Google Maps, and my couch. We’ve been inseparable, especially over the last 48 hours.

This morning when I “talk Jesus” at breakfast, I even thanked Jesus for Google Maps.

My mind is swimming in a sea of budget figures, rental prices, homes, and apartment complexes. I pretty much have memorized the entire greater metropolis area maps for two big cities and can tell you what towns are good and where certain good schools are located. I’ve even Googled Whole Foods locations, churches, MOPS groups, fitness clubs, birth centers, and preschools.

I’m trying to figure out how much house we can afford based on a salary RANGE…knowing that even the top of the range is a lot less than we are getting now.

This morning at the breakfast table, my husband had to order me to take deep breaths and not to say “that word” (one of the cities) until he told me I could, because I couldn’t stop talking and thinking and trying to figure everything out before he had even had a chance to eat breakfast.

I’m a little bit of a control freak planner.

And so here I was at the gym trying to stop thinking and planning and number crunching when the song came on.

There’s a place for us
Somewhere a place for us
Peace and quiet and open air wait for us
Somewhere

There’s a time for us
Someday a time for us
Time together and time to spare
Time to learn
Time to care

If there’s anything we haven’t had in the military it’s peace, quiet, and time together. And now it’s what we need and crave. And I think it’s what God wants to give us.

Someday
Somewhere
We’ll find a new way of living

(You mean apartment living? You mean no more Starbucks? You mean penny pinching and paying for healthcare and all that?)

We’ll find a way of forgiving…

Forgiveness…yes we need this in so many ways…

I’m not really sure what the point of this post is, other than a therapeutic brain dump for me and a taken opportunity to write a blog post in peace.

But I needed this song today.

And I choose to believe today that this song is a gift from God, a promise from Him that peace, forgiveness, and time together is in our future, even if it means a “new way of living.”

“I go to prepare a place for you.”
John 14:2

“You crown the year with a beautiful harvest; Even the hard pathways overflow with abundance.”
Psalm 65:11