Musings on Moving

I am 30-something. And this is my 11th move. I know my military friends do not find this to be an impressive number. BUT. Only one of those moves involved a moving company of the paying kind. The rest We-Hauled with the help of pizza-fed friends that loaded or unloaded the truck.

And we are doing that again. And moving 18 hours away. With 2 kids and a 3 month old black lab.

Josh is in New York, staying in a friend's mostly-empty house that is for sale. While looking for the best place for our family to live. And learning a new area, a new church, and hopefully making some new friends along the way. (Shameless prayer request plug here)

We are still in Georgia. Adding boxes to the giant pile in the garage, a few at a time. I love to organize and purge and clean out and donate and sell stuff. It was fun at first.

But not as much now. I am tired. And going through various items can trigger sadness as I remember a lost loved one, or a special season of life that is gone.

It takes emotional effort to decide what should stay a part of our lives, what can be given away, or what is no longer needed or good for our family.

And that got me thinking about my spiritual house. My heart. My soul. My mind.

If I stay in the same spiritual place and never move, I can begin to hoard. Cover up and ignore things I may need to sift through and sort out. Compliments I need to give away. Feelings I need to discard. Sins I need to toss out. Spiritual dust and dirt that's stirred up by all of that moving around.

It's hard, it can hurt, and it's exhausting. But so beneficial!

So as I am in the weird middle part of this transition...waiting to see where we will live. Waiting to finalize a closing and moving date. Waiting to hear about my job. Waiting for our family to be reunited. Waiting for Ellie Mae to learn to sleep in.

It is tempting to just throw stuff in boxes and deal with it later. But the OCD part of my brain won't let me. Spiritually speaking, however, I seem to allow a higher level of laziness.

Stress and uncertainty (ie: many areas of my current life situation) bring this spiritual laziness to light. Today was a hard day. I struggled with lots of emotions, lots of memories, lots of fears and lots of just plain crankiness.

I was reminded to sort through my spiritual "stuff" just as much as I am managing our physical belongings.

Maybe at least one person needed this reminder too. If you need a correlating activity to help you, I have LOTS of boxes you can help fill up. ;)