Life on the Edge

Life at my house right now is a bit of a whirlwind. Mid-June, we made the decision to move from our home we have been in for 11 years here in Georgia and journey across the country to Kingston, Washington.

In fact, our house goes on the market TODAY!

Do you know what has had to happen in the past 50 days to get ready for today??!!!

It’s not just all the house stuff that we have been sorting through.

We have been sorting through the emotions of leaving our kids here. One of our sons, Ryan, left this week to finish off his final undergraduate semester in South Carolina. Saying goodbye to him was rough because it wasn’t like I could say, “See you at Thanksgiving!”. I don’t know when I will see him next.

Our daughter, Annabelle, is getting all of her things packed to move into her first apartment in 2 weeks. I will tell you right now, I will be a basket case saying goodbye to her!

And then there is my oldest son, Jalen, and his wife, Katie, who have our 2 grandsons. Don’t tell them, but I am planning on sneaking the boys in the U-Haul with me 😊

All that to say, emotions are on high alert in our house right now.

Which brings me to my topic of Life on the Edge.

We can all be pretty good at controlling our emotions when life is going well. We can say that we are happy, peaceful, and joyful and we trust God and all the things because everything is going our way.

But what happens when we get pushed to the edge?

What is our character like then?

There was a moment yesterday when my husband was trying to get me to understand what I needed to buy at Lowes. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. It was one of those moments where tensions were high and we both could have lost it right there.

Instead, I took a deep breath and asked him to literally show me what he was talking about.

I thought about that exchange a lot that afternoon and I am so grateful that even when our stress level is in the red zone, we can take deep breaths and smile at each other. It may be a forced, squinty eyes smile, but it is a smile none the less!

So, let me ask you, what happens to your character when you are pushed to the edge?

How do you work through the stress of high emotions?

<><KC