I kind of ran away from home a few weeks back.
I ran away with the intention of getting 450 miles worth of space between me and me and some of the problems back at home for a few days and with the hope of gaining some clarity and perspective.
I also ran way because I felt like I needed to not be needed by anyone for a few days.
And as much as I hate to admit it, I also ran away because I wanted my husband (who is regularly out of town) to remember how challenging it is to juggle work and all of the kids and their schedules on his own, like I do so often.
The icing on the cake was that I got to hang out in Seattle with my full-grown son (who wants nothing from me but a hug, and my opinions on life and music - though he's quite thankful when I offer to pick-up the lunch tab too) and my sister (who wants nothing from me but a companion while walking her dog, eating good food and watching T.V., even though she jokingly complains about the quality of my companionship with increasing frequency each day that she gets to enjoy my companionship.)
The drive up there gave me all of the clarity and perspective I needed.
And the week away gave me more than enough time of not being needed by anyone and gave my husband enough time to say, "I'm good at sprinting, but this parenting gig is a marathon that takes both of us."
And I had so much fun with Ross and so much fun with my sister.
And the ride home gave me even more clarity as I listened to Andy Stanley talk about how desires are good in a marriage, but how expectations destroy it, and how to stay in love.
And because I made such good time on the drive home, I was excited, knowing that I was going to get to surprise Annie (who doesn't handle me being away from home all that well) by picking her up from my dad's house, while Josh rounded up the older kiddos (who handle me being away from home much better) from different grandparents houses. (Josh had Guard Duty, so he dispersed one child with each of the grandparents for the weekend.)
And I was excited because I knew I'd beat Josh home, which meant I'd have time to take a long, hot bath while talking to Annie about how her week went and time enough to get unpacked and settled back in before he got home with the other kiddos.
And just as I expected, Annie ran upstairs to greet Deedle (her pet rat) just as soon as I unlocked the front door.
What I didn't expect though was the screaming that proceeded Annie's discovery that she had not securely closed the door on Deedle's cage and that he was no where to be found.
I quickly consoled her and quieted her down and reminded her that if all of her attention was spent crying and worrying that she wouldn't have enough attention left to think about where he might be and to how to successfully find him.
I also told her that I'd help her for as long as it took to find him and that her dad and brother and sister would be home soon to join the search party too.
And then we began searching through closets and drawers and cupboards and under beds and in baskets and amongst toys, but the searching was hard because just about every room in the house was a disaster.
So as I searched, I found myself getting more and more frustrated - not because we couldn't find the rat, but because of the half eaten granola bars in Courtney's room (The kids know there's no eating in their rooms because we've had ant problems and rodent problems and those organic granola bars are expensive, so when you open one up, you're supposed to eat the whole thing.), and because I couldn't see an inch of the floor in Cole's room because it was covered in a sea of clothes (He's supposed to do his laundry every Tuesday, but no matter how many times he gets in trouble for it, all of this clothing, both clean and dirty ends up on the floor of his bedroom.), and because Annie must have had 14 dirty towels in her room (Each of the kids have their own towel color so they know which towels are theirs, yet she had her blue towels and Courtney's red ones and Cole's orange ones and just about every beach towel we own all wadded up on the floor in her bedroom, which is so ironic since I guarantee she didn't take more than one bath the entire week since she was on her daddy's watch.), and because Courtney's closet was a disaster (I spend over an hour helping her clean out and organize her closet the week before I left.), and because Annie had decided to make a feast for her stuffed animals out of flowers and weeds and grass, but for some reason none of that 'food' ended up in anyone's bellies or even in the trash for that matter and was strewn all over her bedroom instead.), and because of the mess of books all over Cole's room. (I had helped him organize every single book he owns by series just a few weeks earlier, yet it looked like a bomb went off in a library.), etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (ad neaseum.)
And when the rest of my family arrived, the 'Welcome Home!' greetings I had pictured in my head were all replaced by Annie's pleading for help in finding her rat. (Expectations and reality never really seem to match up, do they?)
Josh put on his headlamp and started lifting mattresses off of beds and pulling drawers away from the walls, I went from room to room helping each kid clean up (while biting my tongue to hold back my complaints and trying desperately to hold onto all of the insight and perspective I had gained over the last week) knowing that our odds of finding him would greatly increase in a clean house, and the older kids each took turns hugging Annie (in between cleaning their disasters/bedrooms) while sharing words of encouragement about finding Deedle (and then silently mouthing to me, "What if we don't find him?")
Three hours later, the house was cleaner than it had been in a long time (though much of the furniture was out of place) but Deedle was still missing.
I put Annie to bed that night as she cried and insisted that she couldn't fall asleep knowing that Deedle was alone and scared somewhere in the house.
And then I said goodnight to the bigger kids.
And then I asked Josh if he wanted to watch some T.V. (I'm stuck on Parenthood.) up in my office.
And then I went up to my office, turned on the computer (I've been watching it on Hulu.), turned off the light and sat down to wait for Josh (He said he had a few things to do before coming up.) and that's when I heard the sound of a rat scratching and scurrying around underneath my desk (even though I had searched every nook and cranny of my desk at least three times earlier that evening) and though the sound of a rat scratching and scurrying around underneath my desk would normally give me the heebie-jeebies, the sound of this particular rat scratching and scurrying around underneath my desk brought me great joy (and relief.)
So I stuck my hand underneath the desk and out popped Deedle (aka Ratfink.)
I immediately started hollering for Josh while running with Deedle into Annie's room to wake her up (Turns out she could fall asleep knowing that Deedle was alone and scared somewhere in the house.) and just relished in the moment (while simultaneously cringing) as Annie greeted Deedle with multiple kisses on his mouth.

And then the Down's Family lived happily ever after.
Just joking.
The last two weeks after coming home really haven't been all that much better than the week that caused me to seek refuge in another state.
And all that perspective I gained on the 900 mile round-trip has been hard to hold onto.
The truth about life (as you well know) is that you're always in one of three places...
Place #1: You're in the midst of a trial.
Place #2: You're just coming out of a trial.
Place #3: You're headed towards a trial.
Two things I was reminded of in the last few days though:
Reminder #1: Josh and I went on a date the other night. I had really been looking forward to it and had spent over an hour prettying myself up in anticipation for it and had starved myself all afternoon just because I knew it would make the coconut mojito and the salmon rangoons at my favorite restaurant in town taste even tastier.
As soon as we arrived, I asked Josh if he had called Cole (who was at my mom's) to 'un-ground' him. (I had grounded Cole from all technology for a week, but then I caught him looking at pictures of Pikachu when he had been entrusted to use his Dad's iPhone to look up political facts about Romania for a report that was due at school. That earned him an extra week without technology. And of course, I would never lift the grounding early myself because when I say something I want my kids to know that I mean it, but sometimes Josh and I like to let the other parent be the 'good guy' by suggesting that they lift the grounding or undo the punishment early. In this situation, I had requested that Josh be the 'good guy' and un-ground Cole two days early so he could watch T.V. at my mom's house.) So Josh called Cole only to find out that Cole was so mad about being grounded while at my mom's house that he had taken off, leaving my mom was in tears because she couldn't find him. (As you might remember, this has been a reoccurring problem.)
Instead of coming together to solve this problem though, Josh and I immediately went on the defense against each other. (This topic would take a long blog post of it's own, but suffice to say that Josh and I have had an amazing marriage thus far, yet on and off over the last year or so, it's felt really hard and we've been really disconnected - and I know we'll make a choice to come out of it stronger and that our relationship will be deeper and more genuine as a result, but it kind of sucks right now.)
So we finished our first drink, decided that neither one of us were hungry (even though I was starving), ended our conversation by agreeing that neither one of us knew how to go about fixing all that needed fixing in our marriage, went home and went to bed (in separate beds) without saying a word to each other. (Turns out Cole had just fallen asleep in my mom's car, but honestly, that's not what the argument was truly about anyhow - so that newfound knowledge certainly didn't bring about a treaty.)
The next morning, Josh and I had plans of clearing everything out of our storage unit (I'm so ready to OWN LESS and LIVE MORE.) so we hopped in his truck (without saying a word to each other) and headed to the dump to unload a bunch of junk.
And then Josh grabbed two pieces of wood and told me to turn around backwards (he turned around backwards too) so we could see who was able to throw the wood the furthest. And then we continued on just like that, with various throwing contests until the back of the trunk was empty.
And when we went to his work to load up a few tables (I need them for a garage sale) he put his arm around me and instead of holding onto my pride (like I had somehow managed to do, even amidst the wood throwing contest at the dump) I decided to let go of it (what a useless, yet destructive emotion pride is) and buried my nose into his chest.
And in that moment, I knew that 'fixing what needs to be fixed' just meant making a choice to move past it. That simple. We can choose to hold onto what feels fair and how 'right' we are (which by default, makes the other person in the relationship 'wrong'), and all of the ways in which we feel misunderstood and not valued OR we can hold onto our marriages, but we can't hold onto both.
Reminder #2: As I was going through some boxes from the storage unit, I found some old, required journaling pages Ross's 4th grade teacher had him write. He talked about being in trouble for not taking a bath, he talked about being grounded for this and that, he talked about hoping he'd get a trampoline for Christmas but how he knew he'd have to get one with a net around it because his aunt had told his mother too many horror stories about kids who were paralyzed for life after falling off of a trampoline, he talked about being sad that his dad wouldn't make time to see him, he talked about not having any friends since we had moved, etc, etc, etc.
I laughed when I read some of the things he had written, I felt nostalgic about things I had forgotten, and I got teary when I remembered some of the pain he had felt during that time.
But as I read them, I also realized that all of those things that felt frustrating and challenging and sometimes overwhelmingly painful at the time were now just memories and some of them were memories that were so insignificant (though they felt plenty significant at the time) that I had since forgotten about them. And then it hit me that today's problems are just that...TODAY'S problems. And that a month from now or a year from now (or heck, even a day from now) I won't even remember today's problems. So it's not really today's problems are the 'problem' - it's how I choose to cope with and handle today's problems that sometimes create the 'real problem.'
And with that newfound knowledge, the Downs's family lived happily every after.
Joking again.
This is just 'where I'm at' lately.
And sure, I could post pretty pictures and pretty words and pretend that I'm NOT here - but I AM here.
And though it feels messy and ugly, I think there's some beauty and some fruit in it.
I was reading the other day about how forest fires seem so destructive and so terrible, but how they're exactly what is required for new growth and a healthy forest.
So I'm banking on some new growth here.