Moving

I really dislike moving. I don't like change, and I don't like mess...and that pretty much sums up the moving process. So while I wasn't entirely surprised when our landlord informed us he was going to sell the house (a suspect story, by the way) and that we had just 30 days to be out (and by his frequent check-ins to make sure we really are going to be able to gone within that time frame, I think he would have loved to have given us less time if legally allowed), I still wasn't happy about it. In addition to the usual upheaval caused by a move, we had absolutely no idea where we would go, we were entirely unprepared financially for such a transition, and we had even less than than our allotted 30 days to find it and pack, as we were going out of the country for entire week this month.

And then...I really disliked the idea of moving because it forced me to confront something I really preferred tightly packed away. When we moved to Ohio, we chose to rent this house, with plans for the house we owned in South Carolina, and even further plans to buy something here. And none of that worked in the least the way we had planned, effectively stripping us of a number of choices. But as long as we were here, in this arrangement that we chose, I could forget for long stretches of time that we no longer had the control - or perhaps just the illusion of control - that we had once had. Leaving here meant looking for another rental, not buying the house we had hoped, and it would be a glaring reminder of what we've lost, and of a part of our future that is daunting and uncertain. 

And of course with that comes lots of anxiety and other unpleasant feelings I'd just rather not experience. But, like it or not, we had to do this thing, in band-aid-ripping fashion. Thankfully, Dave is a take-charge, get-it-done sort of guy, so he dove into the task and looked and looked....and looked and looked and looked....until he found something that seemed promising. It all came together, and God provided in all kinds of ways we never could have seen coming. As it turns out, we're really excited about the new place. 

With that surge of excitement and promise, we got serious about packing everything up. I like to do things in an orderly fashion (even if it only seems orderly to me), so I gave myself a ten box a day quota, which I've been meeting for the most part. And in filling those ten boxes a day, I've tried to pack them in the way that I want them to be organized when we get to the new house, which has involved sorting through things carefully, and throwing away a great deal...and it's made a terrific mess. It hasn't seemed like any kind of system at all, I'm sure. But whether it's having confronted my biggest hidden anxiety - the house situation itself - or just having more time each day (moving with big kids is HUGELY different than moving with mostly little oens) to pay attention to what I'm doing, I've been able also to confront all these piles of things I just haven't before. Sometimes my sense of organization is actually SO great that I just get paralyzed when something seems to overwhelming, or if I can't do it the way that I want, so much so that it actually looks like the opposite of organized. But it's just that I haven't been able to face it, and it just lurks in the corners and the closets, and under the beds...

In fact, we had a garage sale yesterday, to purge the house even further of uncessary things, and as the boys were gathering things to put out, I still felt those little twinges of paralysis.. The boys asked if they could sell their GeoTrax train sets, because they never play with them anymore, and I started to say no. I've been keeping those carefully arranged, hoping and planning to get new batteries for all the trains, and maybe get some extra track pieces, and find the instructions so we can get all the sets put together the way they were when we got them. My stomach knotted up just thinking about it, which, I realized, is exactly what happens every time I see the boxes holding all that silly train stuff. No one cares about it that way but me. And it's like having boxes of anxiety sitting around and being carried from house to house. 

I realized further that so much of our stuff is boxed up that way. My closet is full of anxiety, guilt, and feelings of failure. I paid too much for those shoes ten years ago, so I should hang on to them. Someone gave me that sweater, so I can't get rid of it. I hate those jeans and never wear them, but what if I can't buy new ones later? My school room is drowing in last year's stuff, because we didn't do what I thought we should have, and maybe I should try to catch us up, have that grammar book finished, do a more thorough evaluation of those papers I don't have to time to look through...

Or it WAS all that way. I told the boys they could sell the trains. I threw out half the things in my closet. I put away last year's school books and threw away all but a few of the papers. My ten-box a day quota is slowly but surely capturing the things we need and truly want. And the mess is slowly diminishing. 

Perhaps, too, the anxieties and fears boxed up in all the nooks and crannies will diminsh, too.