Wednesday, November 3, 2010

changes and peace

Well that's it, he's gone. Jason moved out last night after work. It was strange to spend the evening alone with the kids and to see his chair at the dinner table empty. I guess it'll just take some time to get used to being the sole parent around here again.

I gotta say though, the hardest part was when he kneeled down to say 'goodbye' to Owen. Obviously at 2 Owen has no idea what's going on but he understood enough to say "Im gonna miss you" in his sweet little voice. It just broke my heart! He's only asked for Daddy twice since then and it's been easy to distract him from the fact that he's not here. Hopefully it will continue to be this smooth.

As I wait for a loan to come through to buy a van, we're relying on walking wherever we need to go. We live in a sister city to the capital of our Province with only two bus routes. Both connect to the capital city so it's easy to get anywhere that we need to there, but not so easy to get around our own. Thankfully we live about a block away from a large shopping area with a grocery store, walmart, restaurants, hair salons, dollar store, drug store, pet store, candy store, banks, clothing stores and who knows what else. We can get everything we need there and there's also a corner store at the end of our street for those quick runs.

The harder part is school. Our new school is just under 2km from our house if we take a series of side streets and paths. If the littles and I walk the older two to school in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon, we're looking at around 7km/day. Owen can go in a stroller but Jamie is just too little for so much walking. So my brother (who rents a room from me while attending university) has agreed to watch the littles while I walk bring the bigs to school and when possible, when I pick them up as well. What a blessing!

This morning was our first attempt and with snow on the ground, we were apprehensive. We were later leaving that I had wanted to be, but in the end it wasn't a problem. It was cold at first and our faces were numb by the time we were half way there. Even that turned out to be good though because then we couldn't feel the cold! If I hadn't pushed the kids to walk fast, they probably wouldn't have minded the walk either, but because I was worried about how long the walk would take, I rushed them a little. After crossing all of the streets, and getting within a block or so of their school I said 'goodbye' and let them walk the last leg on their own. My brother had to catch a bus at 9 and without a watch, I was worried I would make him miss it. There was no need to worry though as I arrived home about 15 minutes earlier than I had anticipated. Good news because it means that we wont have to rush tomorrow.

There's a lot of changes happening with our lives at the moment but I haven't been anxious like I normally would be. I participated in an alter call at church on Sunday morning and have felt a lot of peace since then. It was only my send time doing so and my first where I felt people lay hands on me. I had two pastors and a number of church members praying with me and through that power, I've been blessed to feel His presence during what could have been a very trying time for my family.

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