We were left dazed and confused but leaning on the Lord and His understanding, not our own.
We were faced (for the first and definitely not for the last time) with a very good question.
What are you going to do?
The Day After
By Friday afternoon, after many phone conversations had been reported back to us, it became clear that we were to leave Spain. Now, we had to tell Jara and Laila. After picking Laila up from school and sitting down after lunch, we shared all that had transpired the night before and over the course of that morning. At first, the girls were as dumbstruck as we had been. Then the initial impact wears off, we all began a kaliadescope of emotions- sadness and excitement and anxiety and uncertainty and joy and peace and on and on. But, we all knew God had a plan. (We'd seen it before. Afterall, we are the same family that had quit our normal jobs, sold about everything we owned and moved across the world to a country where we didn't speak the language!)
So, we prayed together.
We began discussing, implementing, and executing the "to-do's":
- Goodbyes
- Packing
- Travel
- and Surprises
See You Soon!
The goodbyes (or "hasta pronto"s) began immediately on Friday and continued until our last day with friends visiting us at our apartment or, after hearing about our departure from others, approaching us as we were in the community center or in town. We began making continual rounds through the fitness center sharing with our fellow fitness buffs, clients, and friends.
Upon visiting our favorite hangouts in town, we told our friends who own, work and hangout in these establishments.
The girls shared with their friends at church and school and we met with the school administration at both schools to explain the situation and make future arrangements for the girls' education in Spain.
We called our friends on the "need to know" list that don't have the same daily circle as we do like Martin&Maria and Birger&Mabel (our dear friends living in Norway) and Ivan&Eunice (the pastor of the Calvary Chapel Church in neighboring town of Rincon de la Victoria). At Parque Victoria Church on Sunday, the elders brought us before the church to inform them about our current predicament and petitioning them for prayer.
All of these encounters sharing our situation were met with the same disbelief, confusion, and sadness from our friends and dear ones that we first experienced. Each time we shared the story those feelings opened up yet again. We had many sweet goodbyes. We shed many tears of love and joy. We shared much prayer with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We shared much love with our dear friends in the gym and in our beloved little town, La Cala del Moral. "Goodbye" is never easy, and "See you soon" never feels soon enough.
Packing is never easy.
Nope, never as easy at it seems. I am an organized, driven, get-it-done woman. In my opinion, the act of packing must be done methodically, orderly and efficiently. However, in reality, packing is disorganized chaos methodically enveloping your total surroundings! Not a great environment when the air is already heavy with disorganization, chaos and confusion. And, it's never fun to watch your girls hearts breaking as their kitties get packed to find new homes (for the second time).
Once we had help figuring out where to store our things and boxes in which to store them (Thank you, Mike, Lope and Christian), we were able to start the tedious process of sorting, cleaning, packing, storing. With each of us packing light (or as light as one can when facing an Indiana winter), we brought only our winter wardrobes leaving behind everything else. We even decided to purge items into storage boxes or to the trash and recycle bins that weren't necessities and weighed us down like toiletries, old or almost outgrown clothing, and the extras like books, games, toys.
We used the opportunity to weed through the items we were looking to put into storage. Would we still need or want each item in 9 to 12 months? Finding a balance in the trash or treasure. Keeping in mind, that upon our return to Spain, we will be setting up in a new living space and starting over. We had not purchased many things and the items that we has acquired either given to us or salvaged on scavenger hunts would be costly to replace.
In 10 days, we had packed up everything that was physically in our Spanish life, placed it all in storage to await our return, and left a clean apartment empty of our time there. We had packed 4 suitcases and 4 carry-on's to accompany us in our flight to the USA.
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