On Moving Part 1

You wanted to move. You wanted to move. You wanted to move.

Those words replayed in my brain over and over and over. They were true. I did want to move. Our move made sense on a bunch of different levels. Craig’s role with the Navigators had become less about hands-on ministry and more about reconciling numbers. He’s not a numbers guy. The whole “do 20% of what you hate so you can do 80% of what you love” principle had reversed itself in his role. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was just the nature of the situation we were in. It wasn’t exactly a healthy one for a guy who needs to be on the content end of things and not just the implementation end.

I don’t think I knew this about myself at the time, but have really come to know it now – I just really thrive on change. We moved four times while in the Springs, not counting all the 4-month summer moves up to camp we did. We’d come to a place where we’d stopped doing that and landed in the house we were probably going to be in for the rest of our days. We’d also stopped moving to camp. We were stable and I suppose there’s something about stable that threatens me. I’m not sure what that is, but there you have it.

It’s hard to reach back to the details of that time. Time has a way of polarizing emotion – you either remember only the good or only the bad. Finding balance in your memory is tricky.That’s why it’s easy for me to sit here, five years later, and only remember everything good about being here. Honestly, I’m thankful it’s that way.

Now back to the story:

I started packing immediately. Being a change-lover, I started processing the move as quickly as possible. We’d only been at Village 7 officially for four months, so I didn’t really become intentional with many people there, knowing we would be moving in four more. I regret that decision.

I can look back at my story and think I was just oh-so-ready to move, but when I go back and read blog entries from that time (because, yep, I was already keeping a blog at that time), I see I was grieving the move even before we left. I knew what I was leaving. I just REALLY knew it after we left.

Here’s the thing I think I want to remember if I’m ever in the position of walking someone else through a move like this – it’s right to be excited about what God is doing and it’s right to grieve what you are leaving.

It would be more sad to be involved in a move where it’s just relief to be done with what you were doing and away from who you are with. Not so in our case. Thank God for that.

But here’s the other thing I want to remember – if one of my friends moves away someday, confident in what they are moving to, and excited about it, and then they email me four months later, because they are so lonely they can’t stand it, I want to step into that grief with them. I want them to hear from me that I know it’s hard. That they are conflicted. That they are grieving.

What that email did for me was this: It made me cry, and it made me think that EVERYONE in Colorado Springs felt the same way – that I wanted to move, so I deserved to feel isolated and alone.

I never processed that move with anyone else from Colorado Springs. I never really processed it with anyone in St. Louis.

I stuffed it. For five years.

Click here for Part 3.