From the Oceans to the Mountains

Every blog I’ve written in the last couple of years has started with a simple thought. Over a short (and sometimes not so short) amount of time, the idea rolled around in my brain until it was fleshed out and shared here in my blog. But for the past month, ideas haven’t had time to marinate or be thoughtfully considered, hence the lack of posting. My brain has been functioning in a hop-skip-jump pattern. It’s the effect of trying to process too many things at one time and ending up glitching like the little girl in Wreck-It-Ralph.

The catalyst behind my glitch? We moved. From the beautiful beaches of the east coast to the sprawling mountains in the west. We said goodbye to the state of lovers and hello to a colorful one. It sounds simple when you type it. We moved. Period. Like it was one simple act, and not the stress inducing, nail biting, tension causing, exhausting process it has been. Someone asked me in all of this if I was excited to move, and the best I could answer was, I’m ambivalent. Getting excited would have taken too much brain processing power that was dedicated to final doctor appointments, organizing medical records, planning a cross country road trip for 6 people and 2 dogs, and somehow in the chaos trying to say goodbye.

And now that I’m here, I still feel ambivalent. Do I miss my old home, do I love my new one? I don’t have time to process that. My view of the Rocky Mountains was immediately blocked by a mountain of boxes that needed to be unpacked. Plus, we have the chaotic joy of a baby who’s starting to walk, my nephews joining us for the summer, combining households with my parents and their 2 dogs, and the daunting task of setting up my daughter’s medical care from square one. Oh, and find a new hairstylist because arid climate and six years of beach hair are not compatible.

But every now and then it catches up to me— walking into Costco, finding the closest Starbucks, hanging another picture on the wall, listening to a song I sang in our home church. It hits me hard– the realization that the life we lived back at the beach, the person that I was, that part of my life, has ended. We won’t roll into the doctor’s office anymore to see our favorite security guard and nurse. I won’t pick up Starbucks at 9:10 on Wednesday mornings from the barista with the red hair who makes the best chai lattes. My children won’t play at the park around the corner, roaming in their kid-pack, waiting for dusk and the jingle of the ice cream truck. We won’t share our lives anymore with the people we knew and loved, no more last minute get togethers at Chick-Fil-A, no more backyard barbecues or s’mores. I won’t get to welcome my friends home from their deployments, I won’t even have close friends to invite to the baby’s fast approaching first birthday.

It’s those little things that hurt more than you’d think.  The loss of people and places that wove themselves into the tapestry of our lives with vibrant strands the color of the ocean. We’ve got to weave a new one now, with the grays of the mountain and the green of the rolling prairie hills, and soon, the new people that God will place in our lives to bless and be blessed– if I could just finish unpacking these boxes so I can get out there and meet them. I trust it will be just as beautiful as the last, but it won’t be the same. Until then, it’s okay. It’s okay to feel ambivalent. It’s okay to live somewhere that doesn’t feel like home yet.

For I am about to do something new.
    See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?
I will make a pathway through the wilderness.
    I will create rivers in the dry wasteland. 

Isaiah 43:19