New Beginnings

Belgium in February and March is one of the ugliest places I’ve ever been.

Belgium in April is nothing short of miraculous. Everything transforms from wind-blasted grimy greige to translucent, glowing, shimmering, color-saturated life. Belgium in April is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.

Last week, in tears, utterly frustrated and stuck, I stared at the error messages on my website in dejection. I wanted to post about our UK roadtrip but something in the code of the most recent webhost update was preventing everything from working and my webhost help service was completely unhelpful. A web designer I’ve worked with in the past wasn’t sure what the problem was either.

After days of making it worse and seeing no solution, or even anyone to turn to for help, I tried to be realistic. Is it time to throw in the towel on this blog that I’ve maintained since 2008? I enjoy it, but with tech difficulties and distresses, is it worth it? I felt sick with grief. I don’t have baby books for my kids or trip albums of our family time—this is it.

That morning I’d been trying to catch up on my New Testament reading plan our church is doing, reading:

“And don’t be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God’s place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there.” (1 Corinthians 7:17a, The Message)

The author is specifically talking about being single vs. married, but I found the location aspect of it extremely applicable at this time of traveling and looking ahead to another international move by the end of the year. And even this location of sitting at my laptop.

I felt hopeless but compelled to thank God, even though words of thanks felt like I was scooping them out of the pit of my stomach and forcing them out out: “God, you are not limited by these things that seem unknowable and impossible to me. You tell us to give thanks in everything, and I will thank you for what I am learning and what you are teaching me through this process, even if it’s that it’s time to end this thing.”

That sounds trite in words, but sitting at the dining room table in misery, thinking about shutting down the whole site and all the years of labor spent on it, it had me thinking about whether all the little things we do are pointless and what is the meaning of anything we do anyway. Is it all wasted time, this Navy life, bouncing around the world far from family, little choice over where we live? Writing blog posts is often for me an exercise in choosing thankfulness for where we live, and a way to stay connected to family 10 time zones behind us as well as friends. I sat there in uncertainty and loss.

“Why don’t you see if Simon can help?” suggested Chris and my mom. My brother is a computer engineer, but he’s busy with his family, church, friends, work, life, etc. I didn’t want to bother him with my silly hobby blog.

But I did anyway. I organized the issues and desired outcomes into an email, Simon responded warmly, and beepity boop bop (those are computer noises), he made sense of it all. He fixed everything. EVERYTHING. These are issues that have been worsening for MONTHS.

He explained that a website update inserted code into the interface something that some of the plugins couldn’t understand, essentially, so aspects of the site sort of triggered an immune response from some of the security settings. I think. This is a gross over-simplification and probably not entirely accurate. But it’s FIXED.

This is so far outside my abilities that it was as good as impossible. But not for Simon.

I had thanked God for what he was teaching me in the process. What I learned is that, across continents and oceans, my brother had my back. The hardest thing about taking on a third overseas tour in a row with covid not quite a memory is the distance from family. Is it all a huge mistake? Will we have massive regrets? We (I) struggle with these questions. A lot.

But: It’s not too far to be close. What seems like the end can be a renewal. It’s hard and it hurts, and it’s going to be ok.

Other things I learned: how to more easily and inexpensively print off “yearbooks” of past blog posts since Eloise was born. This is on my list of Things That Seem Impossible That I Wish Were Done (this is a real list).

I also learned Eloise is an observant encourager. She saw I was preoccupied and wrote me this note. She and Isaac sweetly prayed for me at bedtime. “We should buy Uncle Simon a present,” she said after the Big Fix.

Isaac didn’t quite understand why I wanted to get old posts printed out. “Don’t you like to look at old pictures of you and Eloise?” I asked. “No! I don’t like to see pictures of ANYONE when they’re little!” “….whaaaaa? Why not?” “Because everyone looks so… HELPLESS!”

Whew, good thing they’re so … not helpless… now…? Hee hee

My friend Brittany and I revisited the tulip garden in a castle that’s only open this time of year, Floralia, which we also visited last year. (This is the same garden I visited with Chris and the kids in the rain last year when I spectacularly fell down a ramp.)

Tulips and sunshine—what could be more Springtime in Belgium? And today, the colors seem brighter and more beautiful because of the grim season that came before.

And again and again, THANK YOU, Simon!