still here

“She woke up in the morning with the option of being anyone she wished.
How beautiful it was then that she always chose herself.”
-Tyler Kent White

It’s been eight years since I boarded a plane with an eight month old on my hip, all our belongings shoved tight into overflowing suitcases.
Eight years since I stepped off that plane into a foreign country, full of foreign smells and sounds, and called it home.

I don’t know what eight years is like to anyone else. For me, it is a lifetime and a dream.
I look back and I have to remind myself, “That was you. You did that. You lived that. You walked that path. You got through that, too.”

I’m digging for roots now. I’m searching for stability and truth and hope and a string of good damn days. The boys have found a community in Scouts and I’m finding the courage to walk back into Church. We’re learning to live and breathe and be present.

I don’t speak of Germany every day like I used to. The time between stories is getting longer; I’m forgetting the sounds and the smells. I don’t quite remember where that path behind the duck pond leads anymore, and the roads to Idar Oberstein are a blur in my mind. I’m waking up slowly from a dream that held my heart, a dream I’ll never fully understand.

I miss it so very much, but it’s still there and I’m still here.

And our stories never end…