moving week.

This was our moving week.  Thanks to those who helped us by praying, taking things off our hands, caring for our children, making us dinner, and sending emails and texts of encouragement.

Yesterday David and I drove to our Waterway apartment 606 one last time.  We did a Goodwill run with my dad’s truck, gathered up our last few things, cleaned bathrooms and kitchen counters and toddler fingerprints off glass.

And then, we said good-bye.  One more good-bye in a whole season of good-byes.

Now we are more or less settled at my parents’ for this final month in the States.  Tomorrow we say our Lexington Presbyterian and Watershed Fellowship church farewells.  On Monday we leave for ten days in PA with David’s family.

We are wrapping things up.

And I am asking God to help me keep a quiet heart in these last days when everything in my world feels haphazard and out of place.  There’s no schedule, no space of our own, and all the earthly belongings we have left are either stored in someone’s attic or crammed into boxes and tupperware bins throughout my parents’ house, waiting to be sorted through and packed one last time before our big move.

This place I’m in right now rubs against everything in my nature – my longing for organization and order and routine.  And so that is why it is all the more miraculous that God is answering my prayer for a quiet heart.

He’s giving me peace, right where I am.  He is showing me that my energy – the true, joy-full, life-giving energy I need – comes from him, not from what is around me.  He’s helping David and me to connect with each other daily in all this stress, to repent often, and to stop and kneel down and take notice of our two children, whose worlds have suddenly turned upside-down.

He’s helping me gather up in my heart these quiet moments with my family – the sound of my dad’s voice in the other room as he reads a book to Judah, a leisurely breakfast of homemade waffles, making and eating s’mores around the fire pit with my parents, the good and hard conversations that we need to have with each other.  I am filing away these memories, to be pulled out and treasured for years to come.

And he is gently reminding me: what matters most in this last month before we leave is people.  Not my apartment (or lack thereof).  Not my things packed up in boxes or given away.  Not my comfort or my space or my plan for when we set foot in India.

Dear God, this month please help me to see and treasure the people you have given to me.

I am so, so thankful for them.