Gratitude, Preparation for Loss, Endurance & Joy

 A year ago, I was a hot mess. Well, at least more than usual. 8 months pregnant and a 30 days to find a new place to live with 3 kids at home. Life was... lemons. As I wrote previously, I wasn't sure what the Lord had in store for me. This was a mean trick, especially after all the praying and fasting I had done to ask that the Lord help us live in the right house before moving to Virginia a year earlier.

 

Good news. We now live in the right house. It's smaller, but less expensive. We live in a great neighborhood. Our school is good and Marie's 2nd grade teacher was sweet and kind.  But our Ward... the Vienna 2nd- is everything I have needed in a ward. I meant to write a post about gratitude in October. To comment on the lovely little co-op preschool our ward does and how many friends Mina had made. How my visiting teacher, Cami White, cares about me and takes care of me. How our home teacher, Lance Walker, remembered my birthday while Brett was working out of the country. How the primary class I thought I couldn't teach turned out to be the most smart and mature bunch of kids, and how Marie was in there. So many things.

But I didn't know why I was really in that ward until Nigel passed on.

Nigel died April 12, 2016. It wasn't until then, and the crazy events surrounding his death did I realize the Lord was taking me out of my former, pretty good situation, and putting me EXACTLY where people would love me, invest themselves in me, and catch me when I needed it most. He was preparing me for loss by putting me in a good situation.

I am so grateful.

 

Some of what the Lord does takes forever to understand, but this lesson, it took about 10 months.

 

 

Nigel once said to me, "Rachel, don't have 5 kids. Have an even number. One always gets left out."   

Poor Nigel, born #3 of 5 kids, smack in the middle. He felt like he had no partner. We all loved him, but I think he always felt a misfit. But the real truth is, that his placement was no mistake. He was the center. He would connect us. He always brought our family back together.

 

Note: the picture below has a twin and I am bound to find it. Taken 20+ years earlier at the Yellowstone Continental Divide, we ranged from 2-9 years of age .  I love it, because he's not in the center in this one, he connects Marcus to Malcolm. And I connect Jesse and Marcus, aligning us tight together where we belong. It reminds me to be a better person. As close to the Lord as Nigel was, so that I do my part to keep us together.

 

 

 

 

Another trinket about Nigel is how relaxed his sense of humor could be. He was probably closer to Brett than any of my brothers. A lot because he lived with us for a year, but also because he was just so silly and easy to make Brett laugh.

 

 

He LOVED birthdays. Didn't matter if it was his or not. Just loved a good time and wanted everyone to be happy.  He never grew out of this.

 

 

He also love my kids. Above is him and Marie at 2 months.  He babysat her and she fussed and fussed. But he patiently held her in his big arms until she fell asleep.

 

 

 

I ache that since we lived in Japan during most of Mina's life that I have really only this picture with him and her. It was taken at Yellowstone in 2014 after we moved back to America. Mina is most like Nigel out of all my children. A little stubborn, a little wild, very caring, and all heart.

 

 

 

This also was taken at Yellowstone. Though his last years will always be marked by his struggle with schizophrenia, it will also be marked by his strong desire to show his family, especially his nieces and nephew how much he loved them.

 

This picture is the final one I would take of him. I am so sad when I see it. Showing him Eve for the first time. He, in all his sickness barely able to convey emotion the way he wanted. But his eyes say it all. He loved that little girl. Full confidence in her goodness and what she and her sisters will do for the world they grow up in.

Maybe it doesn't make me sad.

The terrible loss of him brings me closer to the truth. What is real. What matters. His death sets me on that straight course back to God. That course, though strict, has many happy and joyous moments on it; Marie's baptism, more family time, more lightness through leaning on Christ. Maybe it brings me joy.

 

So thank you for reading, if you have made it this far. I will wrap it up with a picture of a good moment, and a poem from my late Grandmother Lucille Perry.  

 

 

 Quaint witcheries of memory

Enchant the past days I have known;

Mundanely lived, now poetry

With all prosaic features flown.