"Patience, Grasshopper"

A very wise friend told me this yesterday. Very, very wise.

As an Army family, you get used to moving. Every few years, you get rid of as much of your junk as you can, allow complete strangers to come, pack it all up, load it into a truck and/or crates and cart it off. Then, another set of complete strangers either drive or boat your stuff to the next destination. All of that is NO FUN, quite stressful, and not something you look forward to the next time.

You arrive at your new place with great hopes. Hopefully, you have a place to live as soon as you arrive. Hopefully, your soldier will like his new job. Hopefully, your stuff will all arrive in the correct pieces they left in. Etc., etc., etc.

What really stinks about moving is that they can't pack up your friends to go with you. Or your church.

I am not going to lie, letting Jasen leave this time was oddly hard. It's only 5 days, 5 days! and the kids and I are at a loss and quite depressed. You see, without Jasen, we have no one here. Literally, I've told more than one person lately that the only friend I have in Charleston would be my personal trainer, and, honestly, he's not very friendly. The things he does to me are quite hateful. Grace has NO friends. Davis has NO friends. It's just the three of us.

On the church subject, we visited one of the churches on our list today. Yikes. Not for us. They were the nicest people, so friendly and welcoming. But the first time their pastor said "Jesus!" and meant it as an expletive, our attitudes completely changed. Nevermind that he couldn't put a coherent thought together. So we won't be going back there. One off the list.

I promise the kids and I are fine. It's just different when you are a military family, living outside a military community. I'll quite my complaining now and start practicing that patience thing.

"Patience, grasshopper."