I am stuck in between. Every military wife is well acquainted with limbo. Limbo is knowing you’re moving, but waiting. Limbo is knowing a deployment is about to happen, or about to be over, but waiting. Limbo is wondering if much hoped for orders will ever come and waiting and waiting and wondering if you dare to hang curtains and invest in your home or even in friendships that might be cut off at the quick. Limbo is also living paycheck to paycheck, having a list of needs and wants and plans, and being able to do one small thing every two weeks, but never being able to complete a project entirely.

Planning for the needs of a move, two growing children, a husband who is gone and a baby who will arrive in due time- time that feels at once far away and around the corner- well. . .I feel like I’m putting sprinkles on a cake one at a time rather than just shaking them on. It is maddening.

I can tell you right now almost exactly what I want to do to decorate my living room in the new house and to make it homey and “fit” to the shape of the room and our needs. I can show you the fabrics, the bookshelves, the rocking chair- but I can’t just make that happen without sufficient funds and enough time and calm to actually sew the throw pillows and the curtains and to set details right.

I can tell you exactly how many diapers and wipes and baby outfits I need, but I can’t just click a button and make it happen. The same goes for plans for my family when we are all reunited, and plans for the birth of this little one. I know exactly what I want.

I have Christmas shopping nearly complete- except for two small details, both of which have to wait for my time and one of my freelance paychecks to hit. I am so close to having that done I can smell it- but I just can’t get there.

I know this is an extremely common complaint. Very few people get to look at life like a Pottery Barn catalog and say, “I’ll take the entire room down to the golden retriever named Buddy and be done with it. Most of us plan and put our lives into practice in baby steps of accomplishment. . .but I wonder. What would it be like to snap my fingers, or even to schedule an entire day devoted to these ongoing, brain-sucking projects and just see them done?

Monday I shall sew the living room quilt, curtains and coordinating decor. Tuesday, I will do all of my baby shopping online. Wednesday I will unpack the entire house. Thursday, I will cook a holiday dinner perfectly, from the pies to the free-range, organic bird and it will look like it came from the pages of a magazine! Friday I’ll go to work, be fabulous and everyone will love me. Saturday I will nurture my children until they are so blue in the face with goodness, wonderment and light my home feels like Heaven on Earth, and then Sunday I will worship in perfect harmony, feel uplifted and sustained, and use those gifts to truly serve those around me.

What would I do the next week?

I am unrealistic. I know. I would need a team of underlings to accomplish all that every week. But I am a planner, one who is stuck in limbo, and sometimes the planning turns to sheer fantasy. Right now, I’m going to go fantasize that it is all done and I am holding my baby.

(The pic has nothing to do with the post- I just love the image of Jonas laying there waiting for the water to hit him, just taking life as it comes).