We are finally home and beginning to (emphasis on ‘beginning to’) settle into our new normal as a party of 6. If we haven’t seen you yet, we certainly hope to soon~ Please know we are thinking of you💛💛
Many people have asked us “How are things going? Are you settling in? How is Gerard?”
The simplified answers are:
Pretty Well~ Yes, kinda ~Pretty Well.
I fear the hoped-for responses are:
Wonderful~Absolutely~He is Overjoyed!
Well, we are nothing if not realists in our home, and we strive to respond to life with engagement, authenticity, and hopefulness. I can wholeheartedly say that this IS a dream come true~ we are actively in the ‘living out’ of a wish that has been growing for over 3 decades. And as many dreams are hard-earned, this too brings the challenges of bringing a hope into reality. So many Olympians and Pro Athletes can testify to this!
The older Luke and I grow, the more we are sure that life exists in the ‘both-and.’ We are both full of joy and tired, both content and nervous, both grateful and doubting our own abilities. We need both our own developed resources and each others. We need both God and people in our community. We are in peril if we don’t grow both spiritually and emotionally more intelligent. We can both live to the fullest and feel we have nothing to offer. We are both finite and limited. And all of this is BOTH human AND supernatural. Amen! The long and short of it is that we are doing exactly what we hoped to be and experiencing what we expected. Each day feels a bit more natural, with the occasional one step forward-two steps back phenomenon.
During our last week in Bogota when we were all just trying to make the hours tick by a bit quicker we watched a movie we thought Gerard might enjoy~ Dora and the City of Gold. Dora is an exuberant teen who was raised by her explorer parents in the jungle where she made friends with the animals and learned many survival skills. She stands out as one of the most positive and joyful people you could ever meet. She has a song for everything and even grave danger doesn’t make her flinch. As the story goes, her parents head out on a dangerous archeological expedition for which they do not want Dora to accompany them. Dora finds she is to fly to LA to meet her cousin Diego to experience ‘normal life,’ which includes attending public high school and living in a house, in a suburb, with her aunt and uncle, grandmother and cousin. On Dora’s first day of high school she has to pass through the school metal detector and by the security guard to enter. Her trademark ‘backpack’ is full of unconventional item~ flares, a hammock, iodine pills to clean water, a two-way radio, and a yo-yo. Of all the things~~the security guard tells her you can’t bring ANY of this is in, except the yo-yo. To which Dora exclaims, “You are letting me have my yo-yo. This is by far my deadliest item!”
I keep laughing at this scene in my mind as I line up some similarities to our current situation. Dora’s genius is that she understands the natural world (she is basically a master botanist and zoologist, as well as speaking several languages~ including a few ancient ones), AND she can decipher maps of new territory, learn to adapt to her surroundings and even thrive when the situation seems bleak. She understands fully the yo-yo is the most dangerous of all.
The yo-yo looks innocent, it seems natural and simply constructed, not many moving parts and holds the promise of joy and amusement as well as the ability to develop tricks that impress your friends and help you feel accomplished. Who wouldn’t love it?! The yo-yo, however, has other characteristics….it has a limit to its extension, it can be thrown at you quickly and when you didn’t expect it, it can perform tricks like sleeping, mounting, going around the world, it can spin and loop in a dizzying formation, and it can even be ‘unresponsive’ (no seriously, there is such a thing as an unresponsive yo-yo called a 1A yo-yo). This all feels so very familiar~ like some weird analogy for child-rearing….
Even a not-so-normal teen girl who grew up deep in the rainforest understands that boa constrictors and wild hippotamus are hardly more dangerous than the yo-yo! Each day in the Rinehart household, especially now, we are actively engaged in understanding our children, helping them learn their limits, figure out what they are capable of and teaching them to not be a weapon of harm or confusion to others. What difficult and life-giving work this is. Some days I can’t even figure out how to play the game and other days I think I might be able to teach a tutorial on one trick or another. By God’s grace Luke and I are both still standing and still able to wind up and down. With the help of our ‘village’ we feel sure we can continue to develop our yo-yo-ing skills. I really don’t like the unresponsive yo-yo……just for the record.
As always, we are grateful for your prayers and offerings! We continue to pray for our communication to improve with Gerard (English and Spanish), for his educational path to make itself clear, for a therapist for him to continue to heal, for finances to balance out, for hearts in the home to grow closer each day. We love you and count you a true blessing in our lives🫶🫶
By: Caty Rinehart
