Vacation complete

Complete vacation.

It was strange.  I'm not sure if it was the week offline or just the way grieving a goodbye happened this time, but I had almost zero foster care-related emotions on our vacation.  I stopped, and enjoyed being there.  Sitting with B by a camp fire almost every night, just the two of us.   Reading.  Playing hypnotically long games of War.  Lots of walks and hikes.  Throwing rocks into the water.  Being far, far from civilization.

It was magical.

I'm so glad we got away, and when we did.  I was a little nervous about being just a family of four in such a remote place for so long, but it allowed us to just pour attention into our two boys.

I did have my phone, but I barely use it, so almost no one calls it unless I've specifically told them to.  One voicemail earlier in the week was someone pocket-dialing me.  Today I saw another as we were about to use a slingshot to send zucchini into a field at the farm we were playing around at.  I didn't check it during the family activity (and who would want to leave the squash-flinging action anyway), but checked it later to get a message from a placement worker.  She wasn't sure if we were open for placements or not, but was calling anyway.  We were still very far away from home and the message was already old, so I didn't call back, and e-mailed when we got home to explain we were still off the list.

But still, knowing a 3-day-old baby was placed yesterday brings me back down to earth.

So does walking past the bedroom our foster children sleep in.

I admit I didn't spend a lot of time journaling and reading my Bible on vacation, but when I did, I went straight for verses about preparing, thinking about preparing ourselves for our next phase of fostering.  All verses bounced me another direction than what I had been thinking: God is preparing us.

So, here we are, prepared not in the way that I really feel prepared, but prepared in the way that God has made everything fit together in his mysterious way.  Tomorrow, laundry.  Oh man, the post-camping laundry.  Monday, starting toting that phone around, waiting for calls.