Arriving Home

The last step of a move (when you hire professionals), is to take an inventory – to make sure everything is present and accounted for.  So I’m taking stock tonight:

1. 4 Children present and accounted for.  Moving isn’t easy, not even for the little ones who are virtually useless in the help department.  They had to say goodbye to a lot of good friends – to most of the people they’d known their whole lives.  And even if they can’t fully comprehend the magnitude of the goodbye, it couldn’t have been easy.  At various times, each of them has shown the stress of that.  They’ve been unusually clingy, or crabby, or bewilderingly disobedient.  I have too, though.  Overall, though, they’ve been just as resilient as I’ve come to expect.  And now that they’re in their own, albeit new, space, I feel like they’re settling in and settling down some.
2. There are good people here in San Marcos, too.  They’ve welcomed us warmly and eagerly.  They seem excited we’re here and happy to meet our children.  We might just find some friends here.  Moving as a pastor is the BEST.  I don’t think there’s any other profession where you move and have, immediately, a whole community of people waiting to welcome you.
3. I love my new house.  I loved our old house, with its rich woodwork and three floors and big front porch.  Not to mention that it was our first house and we poured a lot of work into it.  I’d only seen this one once, fairly briefly, so I didn’t actually remember it really well.  (I kept checking the online photos to jog my memory like some kind of weird brick-and-mortar stalker.)  But as Joshua said when we walked in as the owners, “It’s better than I remembered.”  And it is.  I’ve come to think of it as our “treehouse” because the main living area has so many windows and sits at treetop height.  It feels open and spacious and right for our family.  I can’t wait to share the space with friends, both new and old (insert casual, trying-not-to-sound-desperate invitation here).
4. We have a great dog.  Bishop doesn’t get a lot of press here on the blog (or anywhere else for that matter), but he has handled the move like a pro.  He was so good on the 4 day car trip.  Seriously as unobtrusive and agreeable as a dog could be.  And he’s settling into his new home with no sign of the neurosis I was certain he’d develop.  I’m going to buy him a furminator.  This is a $50 dog brush that, by all accounts and Amazon reviews, works miracles.  He deserves to have his undercut thinned.  It’s hot here.  (I say that from experience, but not recent experience – we drove into Texas with ay 25 degree cooling trend and plenty of rain.  All that is due to end tomorrow.)
5. I’m ridiculously excited about the grocery situation.   It’s not just the tortillas.  (But it could be just the tortillas.  I bought some fresh today and we made quesadillas out of them for lunch.  I didn’t even have to think twice about whether or not I should hoard them instead!)  Huntington’s strong suit was not grocery stores.  But I now live in the land of H.E.B., which stands for Harry E. Butts, the founder, but the store now pretends it stands for “Here everything’s better.”  And it is.  I can’t describe or explain it to you, but if you come to visit us in our treehouse, I’ll take you there.

6.      There is still a lot of work to be done and details to take care.  Boxes must still be emptied, even the ones in the attic (feel free to ask me about those, just to hold me accountable).  I thought I’d found homes for all the kids toys but then I discovered 4 more big boxes.  We will be having 8 hours of mandatory playtime every single day so that I can be sure they really do play with all those things.  [Even the potato heads.  Why do they never play with those?  I can’t get rid of them – kids are supposed to have potato heads to play with.  Plus, they’re so funny on Toy Story.]  Besides the boxes, there’s the restocking of just about everything.  As things got crazy near the end in Huntington, I may or may not have purged many items.  And there’s all the set-up and “decorating” that I feel the urge but do not particularly have the skill to do, at least not very efficiently.  I’m thinking this will involve many trips to Ikea and Target.  And maybe I will finally foray into the realm of Pinterest as a procrastination method.  And, last but not least, we need internet service, a washer and dryer, a microwave, and new cell phones and service.  We’ve also got to find doctors, a dentist, a vet, the elementary school, and super fun things for the kids to do in the 6 weeks before school starts.

I think we’ve got this.

Leaving Home

Josiah ALWAYS smiles... except for pictures

...unless you tell him to make a sad face.

One week ago, we packed up the bags and boxes that were left after the moving trucks had pulled away, loaded up our two cars with eight people and drove away from Huntington, West Virginia, the place we had called home for 8 years.  And they were eight really good years.  Huntington was the place we began our ministry “for real,” the place we bought our first house, the place we had our 4 children, and the place where we formed deep and formative friendships while doing all those other things.  Although I’d had times of feeling pretty heart-broken over what we were leaving behind, it was interesting to me that I didn’t really feel sad that afternoon.  Maybe I was just too exhausted.  Mostly, though, I think I felt… ready.  Ready for the next adventure God has in store, because I’m sure he’s been preparing us for something.  And I know I felt grateful.  Really grateful for the gift of being, of living, among people who have been both encrouaging and challenging.  I’m grateful for the ways we grew in Huntington (and not just in number J). 

• ·         We learned the value of investing in our local community, in committing to the welfare of the city we’re in.
• ·         We experienced the gift of open and generous hospitality – the kind where people welcome you into their lives and are willing to step into yours.
• ·         We became pastors and hope to never take that gift for granted.
• ·         We began the hard and humbling work of striving to live what we preach.

I have the feeling that every place we live from here on out will be compared to Huntington, and either nostalgically or in reality, come up wanting.  These have been good and golden years.