wrote this the second week here, but we didn't have internet and as we have settled in, maybe can try to keep up with this to see where and what the next step of life is....never really edited it so good luck...
So we moved. It has been over a week and somewhat settled it. I had said when we started contemplating this move that it would happen quickly in a matter of a day or so and that is what happened.
Maybe it was discernment or just God really preparing me for it to happen like that; sadly it didn’t really prepare anyone else.
Dan took the week before Thanksgiving off and in a matter of days it all came together. It was a neat time for us but exhausting. We sent the kids to my moms for a few days; which to do that is an act of desperation. We had some really good nights of prayer and talking and lots of crying. We wavered heavily over “TO GO OR TO STAY.”
I don’t think throughout our whole marriage we have prayed this consistent together or this much.
Praying really changes things. Maybe we would have ended up staying without all that prayer or maybe we would have come but not have experienced the peace with it?
Again, sadly, we have left some of our closest friends. They have been such a support through this and it feels so empty to have just picked up and left them like this. The only thing that is giving me hope right now is that five years ago I felt left behind. Two of my close friends moved. We were moms with small children who had started up a strong support system that we needed and then like that, it was gone. I felt mad, bitter and alone.
In the middle of this move the analogy of the game Jinga has come to mind. It is that block/tower building game where you try to pull pieces out of the tower and stack them on top of each other; but if you pull the wrong piece, the whole tower topples, leaving you to start again. I had worked so hard to start again and felt like I was getting somewhere in getting a solid gain on my “tower” and it toppled. I know too, some of the friends we left feel the same way and I am just so sad; but then again, maybe I would have never met them if my other two friends didn’t leave. Again, giving me some hope of this new start here.
I guess I started again 5 years ago, and really even before that, 5 years before when I first moved to the Cland area…Maybe I am on some 5 year schedule??? (God, I so pray this isn’t your plan!)
Some of the crazy in all of this, is we are renting a 2 bedroom condo for our 5 person family plus a dog, and renting to possibly own our house. It all feels so humbling. To leave a house we pretty much started to renovate that felt like it was finally “ours” and entrust it with another family. To leave a community that finally felt like we truly “belonged too”. To have just found a church that for once felt like people where “real”.
I use the “” to maybe realize that my whole life I think I have tried to achieve this as something I felt I needed; and maybe now, God allowed me a taste of it, but is showing me that I, along with my family, really just need him.
There is a devotion that I keep coming across in Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest that I know is showing me need for God right now, and maybe too, the friends that I have left behind. The even more intriguing thing about this particular devotion is that I had journaled the name of one of my friends who had moved 5 years prior. This has given me some more peace in this moment of being led away
In the devotion he writes referring to Isaiah 6:1 and the death of King Uzziah:
“Our soul’s history with God is frequently the history of the “passing of the hero. Over and over again God has to remove our friends in order to bring Himself in their place, and that is where we faint and fail and get discouraged .Take it personally: In the year that the one who stood to me for all that God was, died-I gave up ever thing? I became ill? I got disheartened? Or – I saw the Lord?
My vision of God depends upon the state of my character….It must be God first, God second, and God third, until the life is faced steadily with God and no one else is of an account whatever.
If you want to read the devotion in full, the date of it is July 13 (Must mention even more timely and reminded of this as it is one of the friends birthdays of who I just left).
So at the moment, we pretty much gave away our house and are living in a two bedroom condo. The last week has been exhausting as we moved in cold rain (but thankful it wasn’t snow!) This was the first move with our 3 children and I prided myself with how much stuff we got rid of, but also am humbled by how much we still have and am trying to find a place for it all, and have “kindly” ridded ourselves of more of it.
I have decided to attempt home school with my 8 year old daughter and have gotten that up and running and at the moment am pretty pleased with it. We still have to meet our neighbor who we share a wall with and I am dreading that moment and don’t want to look them in the eye with the amount of crying, banging and fighting the kids have done in the last week. Mentally I know it has always been like this, but all of a sudden when you are sharing a building with someone it feels like the sound of it all is a million times louder.
I still need to “start all over” as in getting a church, doctors, dentists, activities and lessons all in order. All part of a new chapter I guess.
Renting is “hanging” over my head, as I know that again at some point another move is in store, but storing that WAY in the back of my head. Oh the “next move”….We are praying that maybe it would lead us back to C-land to maybe finally pursue ministry at the church we left? Something that Dan and I have talked about the last few years. Praying against the emotion of it all.
Dan has been home every night for a week and I can really feel the difference. The funny thing too about it all is it really is just his presence because I don’t think we have had more than a few minute conversations in the last week. Sadly at the end of the night, we are still exhausted from the kids and probably because it is dark so early now, but there is a peace.
Much of this blog was started on Psalm 63 and think that the Psalm was laid on my heart to prepare me for this move, as now I feel somewhat led into a “desert”. Maybe I am a the start of being in it or am some what in the middle? No matter what, I really think it is the start of something? Whether just to grow and seek God more and/or a time to cling to my children and husband in a way that I haven’t over the years?
Move: (verb uses without object)
1. to pass from one pale or position to another
2. to go from one place of residence to another
3. to advance or progress
4. to have a regular motion
5. to start or to leave
