Predicting the future

My kids are often asking me to predict the future:

"When is Grandma going to get here?"
"What are we doing this week?"
"When is my friend going to call me back?"

And lately, my standard response is, "I am not very good at predicting the future. We will have to wait and see".

I would like to think there are some things I know about the future. One of the things I thought I knew about my future is where I will always live. I knew when I married my husband 13 years ago that we would always live in our hometown. I have said this hundreds of times: "If there is one thing you can count on, we will always be here". He is such a sweet son to his parents and his family has been in this community for at least five generations. My husband grew up living in the same house his whole life. In fact, we still have the same phone number he had when he was growing up! This man has ROOTS.

My life was not like that. Moving was a pretty regular part of my life. Things were often changing. At first, I wasn't so sure I would like returning to my hometown. I only knew I loved that man and I would follow him anywhere. I adjusted to the idea and we started planning our future together. We both talked about how it would be wonderful for our kids to have a home, one home to grow up in, one home to come back to. We talked about wanting our kids to know our parents, really know them. And we have been living those dreams and loving it!

I can't say for sure when things started to shift, but there have been little hints of impending change over the past year or so. Finally, in the last several months, we could no longer ignore that it was time to consider a different future.

My husband and I both have been doing some big learning and growing this summer. I know this because it has been HARD at times. We have been very attached to our good life here, so thinking about leaving took some adjustment. If I had been reading about my life in a book, I'd have been tempted to skip to the end of this chapter and find out how it was all going to work out. I often tried to predict how things would turn out, and I was wrong every time. So I eventually quit trying to predict and put my energy into patience. I learned that I have a lot to learn about patience.

My husband received an offer last week that will take us out of our little town to a big city in another state. We are excited about a new adventure for our family and sad about all we will leave behind. Whereas before, we tried to plan our "forever", now we're not looking so far ahead.

In fact, right now, we are so busy with moving that I can barely see past this day to the next. It may be quieter here for a while. If it is, you will know what's keeping me busy. But I won't try to make predictions about that, because now I know better.