The skin on my fingers are covered in paint stains, even after scrubbing them. My hands are stiff with cold. I am brushing the empty walls of the new house with paint—pretty words like Bibliothèque, Ritual, and Côte d'Azur. Lots of splotchy squares. Watching light and shadow change each hue as it dries.

The next few weeks are ones of transition. Saying goodbye to a home of almost 16 years, walls that hold stories of my children’s laughter, sacred conversations with friends—so many prayers and arguments and dreams.

I struggle with sleeping most nights lately—the anticipation of moving, of completing all that needs to get done—leaving me restless in the hours when my mind and heart should be most at peace.

Justin encourages me to honor the emotions I am feeling. We talk about the challenge of the past two years, due to the pandemic—and the changes in our family as children grow up and do their best to be independent, preparing for the final moving away. So much moving and staying in one place.

Her room smells of sweetness. Fruit soap, from her shower. Citrus-sugar, from the pink candle, unlit, on her dresser. She is a tangled lump, a mound of cotton comforter and sheets.The room is dark. I crack the shutters open. And still, just the beginning of sunlight, shy and rosy, peeks slow. I open the shutters wider. I invite light further in.

The five of us return from Kenya today--a mission trip with a team of twenty-four others people, adults and kids. I scratch out these words on the plane ride home, my thirteen year old son asleep on my right. Two of us in the family are sick now, but they both will tell you the experience was worth it.When you spend a week with a few hundred orphaned children, ages three to fourteen--and you see how they are loved and how they  know they are loved--you can't help but be forever changed.