settled

Settled. Moored. Tethered.

I've been thinking a lot about these words lately as we uprooted our family.
Okay. Uprooted is probably an overly dramatic verb as we only moved one and a half miles.

But maybe not, because my soul has felt uprooted.*

Yes, leaving our home on Sloan Street was hard in its own right. We had been there for 8 and a half years. It was our first home we purchased. It was where we brought all of our children home. It was where I spent days roaming the backyard as a child, and then later watched my own children meander its same paths. My history in that home was layered and deep and long and wide. It was steady and certain. Our days there were simple and small and full. As I vacuumed the rooms one last time I could not control my sobs as my Dyson rolled over memory after memory.

Several years ago I shared a picture of my empty Louisville apartment that I snapped on the day Brent and I moved out. I wrote about leaving Louisville to "move back home" [can one every really move back "home"?]. I wrote about how I moved to Louisville, a new wife, kicking and screaming. I didn't want to go there. And two years later when we left? I cried. And those tears taught me something: That time and that place had been important, and I hadn't realized it fully while living there. And then I was crossing the river heading west and it was too late.

And back in 2014 when I was reminiscing that leaving, I wrote this:
I thought about how each stage of life has been so full and heavy of good things. I thought about how, because of that fullness, each stage sometimes felt like more than I could handle. More than I had bargained for. More than I had expected. More in the wrong ways. But as each season of life has passed, I can look back and see that the fullness-- the heaviness, the more-ness-- are so very commingled with the beauty and grace that came to me during that time that I can't separate them. In fact, often it's the fullness of that stage that I want to return to. I look at that empty apartment and am reminded that we always want to go back. We always want to relive seasons of our life that are gone. And I wish I had been more present for many of those seasons. I wish I would have realized how good I had it. Even in the hard, messy, unfilled in parts. ... I thought about Louisville and our little-one-bedroom-apartment-evenings. How leaving was so hard because I felt like I hadn't sucked all the marrow out of life that I was supposed to while I was there. 

And then my unknowing 28 year-old self wrote this:
And if one day we choose to leave this home, and I snap a picture of the empty walls and space as we are leaving, hopefully I will smile and know that our time here was filled with all the best kinds of MORE because there was a wife and mom who embraced each season of life she was given. 

I didn't snap the picture. Brent and I had promised each other not to take a picture of the house when it was empty. We didn't want to remember it that way. But I stood in the living room with tear-stained cheeks that were pushed up in a smile. I was grieving the good-bye of that place, but I was deep-in-my-bones grateful of the time we had spent there. And you know what I did? I sang the doxology, out loud, through my tears. [For those of you that didn't go to my college or attend a church that sings the doxology: Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below. Praise Him above, ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen."]. That may sound strange, but in that moment my heart was bursting with gratitude to our God for that place, and for filling it with all the best kinds of MORE, and for allowing me the grace and endurance to live in the grit of it and suck the marrow out of it.

One of the last pictures I took: the girls and I delivered a little gift and note to all our old neighbors

Sloan Street aside, there was something really difficult to me about moving to a new home.
And it was the feeling unsettled more than the change.
There were boxes everywhere and no history in the home for me. There was chaos in the basement that was being remodeled and an address that I had to force my hand to write because the muscles couldn't do it themselves while I thought about making supper.
I didn't feel moored.
I didn't feel tethered.

And I kept bowing down to the idol of settledness.
I kept worshiping the idea of consistency.
I kept grabbing for peace in my surroundings which were scattered and still in boxes; surroundings that weren't familiar and didn't smell like me.

I'm writing this as if it were past tense.
To be honest though, I'm still working through all this.

But here is the Truth with a capitol T that I want to cling to so that I can stop worshiping false idols:
The same God that I stood and, weeping, thanked and sang to in my old living room, moved that mile and a half with me. That same God that gave me a steadfast husband and those four children to bring home, let me bring them all that mile and a half with me.

And that same God promised me that He would never leave or forsake me.
That same God promised that He would be my rock.
That same God said that He, and nothing else-- not an organized pantry, or turquoise cabinets, or toys in their proper place-- would be my peace. 

There is a wall in my new kitchen on which I've decided I want to do a large, hand lettered verse. Brent and I were discussing what verse we thought it should be. We wanted something about the character of God that we could see everyday, and we landed on John 16:33--

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

In Him we may have peace.
In Him we are settled.
In Him we are tethered to the greatest Anchor of all.
In Him, while longing for our one true home, we are always home.

And as I wake up to what feels like chaos rather than a settled home, I will remember that He is my peace.  I will remember that He gives the Spirit without measure. I will remember that a fruit of that spirit is peace.

And if one day we choose to leave this home, and I snap a picture of the empty walls and space as we are leaving, hopefully I will smile and know that our time here was filled with all the best kinds of MORE because there was a wife and mom who embraced each season of life she was given. 

*worth noting: the kids all handled the transition like champs. We didn't make a big hoop-la of leaving the old house-- one day, we just did. And they've never asked to go back and, as is evidenced by the last picture, have had  no problem making this new space their own.