During the last semi-warm days of the year and the first days of December, my family and I moved from one state to another. It sounds so simple, picking up and moving. I should be an expert by now. We’ve moved 3 times in the last 2 years, and yet, I still just frantically pack everything away at the last minute and wonder when we’ll ever find it again. I opened the mailbox to Christmas cards this year with two forwarding labels attached and it makes me tired just seeing it. We lived in each of our last two homes for less than a year.
We moved in December from a beautiful farm I dearly loved in Washington state to a small duplex in the construction zone of a new city in Montana. With 4 boys ages 6 and under, the saving grace here is no attached walls to the other half of the duplex. We are, undoubtedly, the loudest residents in the area.
Today’s temperature is a sunny -7 degrees Fahrenheit. I used to think this meant I shouldn’t go outside but since I’ve spent day after day walking outside in temps like these, I now believe 30 degrees is sweatshirt weather and anything above 40 I should probably be down to a t-shirt.
Sunsets on the farm filled my soul. Sunsets here, surrounded by mountains and all that big sky, take my breath away.
This move took us from a massive old farmhouse, complete with mice and an unfinished basement, to a brand-new 2-bedroom mouse-free space.I have no idea of the square footage but roughly a quarter to a third of our previous space seems about right. Currently we have 6 humans, 3 cats, and 2 fish-tanks living in the same space. The attached garage is part playroom, part pantry, part storage. Did I mention all the cats refuse to leave the house? Apparently, they don’t appreciate the snow on their paws. These cats were most recently living on the farm and spending their nights out hunting in the cold and dodging coyotes and owls so apparently, they left all their moxie behind in Washington. I digress….
Since winter comes and stays here, I made sure we have all the gear for the boys to be out in the ice and snow. Sanity is more important than my unwillingness to get 3 boys and the baby dressed in snow clothes. The ponds froze over back in the beginning of January during the first snap of negative temps so if my boys have their say, we’ll be playing hockey and ice fishing all winter long.
The noise levels in my house are enough to drive me insane if I hadn’t already learned to tune them out into a sort of white noise. Jumping off the back of the couch or from the top of the bunkbeds though, that I haven’t quite tuned out yet.
I’m tired of moving, the pack and unpacking and learning a new space. The energy expended in make new friends and connections. The storming of the kids finding their new normal in a brand-new space, and the making-over of routines to fit our new stage of life.
And yet, I know we are not done.
See, this is only temporary. When we decided to move to Montana, my sister-in-law and her husband graciously offered us this living space while my husband starts his own construction business. We are settling into a new area, learning where we long to be. We didn’t come here to eventually live in the city, farm life calls us.
I loved the farm we lived on before this move. I loved the open fields and the barn, raising the chickens, and learning to prune fruit trees. I even loved my disaster of a garden and watering the huge lawn by hand. But that farm was not ours. We were just renting.
There’s angst in the uprooting and moving to a new place, but there’s so much joy too. I’ve loved the open skies, wide fields, and freedom of Montana since I first visited as a teenager. Living here has been my dream for more than 20 years. I love it, even when it’s so cold it hurts my face.
It’s the holding of joy in one hand for the new start and grief for the leaving of friends and family. It’s the joy of finally finding a home where we can build a farm to call our own, and the exhaustion of moving yet again. While I am longing for this little piece of land to call our own and feeling like I don’t quite belong in these temporary places, I am reminded that we were never meant to live on this earth forever.
We are meant for another place.
As C.S. Lewis says, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
So, I can be okay with temporary here, this is not my forever home. I can feel the stress and exhaustion of moving and I can know it’s not forever. I can choose to make Jesus my home, my steady place, when all seems temporary.
I don’t know how long this small space will be our home. However, cliché as it may be I’ve learned something essential, the building and the trappings don’t matter, it is the people. Wherever we go and however difficult it may be, my family and I are together and when I remember that it doesn’t seem quite so hard.
Today I look out into the street covered with snow, knowing one day soon it will be fields. I don’t have to worry about the timing, God has it down. No matter how much I want to move out of this season right now, I can wait patiently knowing my peace is not found in where I live, it’s found in Jesus.