Sick with a Fever

Some days are harder than others, and today is one of those hard days. After breaking an almost two month stretch of snow on the ground and temperatures below freezing, we have been in the 40s lately. I have noticed that, although my morning drives to work still require headlights, the sky is a little more blue and a little less black these days. We have even finished a couple dinners before it is pitch black outside. We are headed toward spring, but up here in Montana, we still have a ways to go. To make a long story short, I’m getting a little bit of spring fever.

 

But that’s not all. Some days, I get terribly homesick.

 

I have grown personally and spiritually out here, and our marriage has grown so strong when all we have had to rely on is each other. I have gotten my first “real” job and have met some amazing people and live in an amazing little town, nestled in God’s Country. We live in a place where going to Yellowstone National Park or Glacier National Park are not once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, but weekend trips. It’s a fantastic place. But being 1700 miles away from home—from my nearest family member or friend—is tough some days. Combine my homesickness with my spring fever, and you’ve got a girl with a heavy heart. Today is such a day.

 

Never in my life did I ever think I would muster these words, but I miss my Midwestern summers. I might be shedding off some pride by admitting this, but I really do miss it. I miss those clammy, musty, moist summer mornings. I dearly miss lightning bugs (no, they do not exist in Montana). And I very dearly miss the sounds of sitting on the porch on a hot, summer night.. the cicadas and katydids (also, no such sounds here). I miss the flowers in the spring and the birds who announce their return from their winter get-aways. I really, really miss the color green. Real green, like Crayola crayon green. Here, it is not green. Well, okay, technically it is green year-round with the enormous amount of pine trees, but that’s a dark green. We really don’t have green grass or green deciduous trees here, and oh how I miss those big, leafy trees! I miss the vast farmland of corn and soy, with plants swaying in the sunlight from a warm breeze. I miss the summer storms—another thing lacking in western Montana: severe weather; that’s tough for this meteorologist.

 

I’m a Midwestern girl, and more specifically, an Indiana girl (but don’t you dare call me that “H” word—I’m a Boilermaker.) Some days, it’s just hard to be away. But I know it’s for the best. I know that at any moment, I am exactly where I am meant to be, in the palm of His hand, and I know it’s all for a greater good that I can’t understand right now.

 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-15

There is an appointed time for everything,

and a time for every affair under the heavens.

 

A time to give birth, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.

 

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to tear down, and a time to build.

 

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

 

A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them;

a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.

 

A time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away.

 

A time to rend, and a time to sew;

a time to be silent, and a time to speak.

 

A time to love, and a time to hate;

a time of war, and a time of peace.

 

What profit have workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to mortals to be busied about. God has made everything appropriate to its time, but has put the timeless into their hearts so they cannot find out, from beginning to end, the work which God has done. I recognized that there is nothing better than to rejoice and to do well during life. Moreover, that all can eat and drink and enjoy the good of all their toil—this is a gift of God. I recognized that whatever God does will endure forever; there is no adding to it, or taking from it. Thus has God done that he may be revered. What now is has already been; what is to be, already is: God retrieves what has gone by.

 

 

So for now I will just set these words in my heart, continue to grow, continue to pray, and continue to look at pictures from home.