Moving 101

So, in light of our recent move, I have been quite reflective lately (which isn't hard when you have no friends to go to coffee with!!) and here are my latest thoughts: (Audra, I hope you relate to some of this!!)

Moving is a great metaphor for my life. It is exciting, nerve wracking, chaotic, and constantly new. Old furniture must be placed in new rooms - and will probably be moved a few times before it finds its "just right" spot. New rooms have to be filled with configurations made from all the stuff we bring with us! Walls need to be painted new colors and stuff needs to be given away. And I need to be OK with leaving walls blank for a while - places of emptiness will be the decor in my house for a time.

I have to learn new places - and how to get to those new places. And I get lost sometimes, but in my wandering "lostness" I discover new beauty and small treasures in my new surroundings. Although the places have the same names - school, bank, grocery store, church - they are entirely different and must be learned anew.

I must learn new languages and ways to communicate with my neighbors (especially in our neighborhood). I don't speak Spanish, Russian, or Korean, but I am learning a new language of friendship with those who dwell around me. It is interesting that those neighbors who have connected/reached out to us the most are all from other countries. Maybe they too have so recently arrived that they still feel like a stranger and outcast and so they see those labels written all over me! At least when strangers and outcasts get together, they are known by some and have a place to belong.

Being new is a strange feeling. It is enthralling - inviting change and new experiences. It is incredibly scary - massive discontinuity, loss of old security. It is lonely with no one to be known by and it is peaceful as life slows down a little because you don't even know where you could go to fill your time up!! It is death and rebirth at the same time. Death in grieving what is left behind and rebirth in the hope of what new adventures lie ahead.

Moving means I take my old self with me to this new place, but this new place has transforming power to change the old me.