Get Moving

This post is a part of my 10-Minute Tuesday series. I write for just 10 minutes, without heavy editing, on a prompt that a friend has provided. Today’s prompt is “moving.”

I haven’t moved very often in my 57 years of life. When I was a tiny baby, my family moved from Sunnyvale, Calif., to Cupertino, Calif. Then we moved when I was 7 to Oakland, Calif. I moved away to college for 2 years, then I moved back home, then I moved to an apartment in San Bernardino, Calif. when I started my first job with Campus Crusade for Christ.

The house in Oakland, Calif., that I consider the home I grew up in. We lived in that house from 1968 until my mom passed away in 2007. The house was sold later that year.

In San Bernardino, after the apartment, I lived in a house with 3 other women, then a house with 2 other women while I was engaged, and then my husband and I moved into our first little apartment.

Then came the big move across the country to Orlando, Fla. We lived in an apartment first, then built a house, then moved into the house we currently live in. We’ve been here for 19 years almost exactly.

So 57 years, 11 residences, including my college apartment.

Friends helped load the moving truck for my husband’s sister and her family as they relocated from Texas to Orlando.

To me, moving means going somewhere. It means not staying in the same place. When we say a movie or a photograph or a speech “moved us,” it should mean not just that it made us feel something, but that it changed something deep inside us. It took us from one place of being to another.

If we were moved, we should not be in the same place we formerly were.

If the picture of a starving child, orphaned by the ravages of war, moves us, we should not stay where we are. We should do something about it.

This sweet hummingbird enjoys a treat outside my younger sister’s home in Crested Butte, Colo.

Moving is not always easy. It’s not always comfortable. Often, things get lost in transit. Or broken. When we first moved into our apartment in Orlando, we found that it wasn’t what was promised to us. All our earthly possessions were on a truck headed our way, but we had to have the apartment complex move us to a different unit because the one we were given was not right. New checks had to be ordered with our new apartment number; the moving company needed to be contacted to bring our stuff to the right door. We spent a  few sleepless nights on the floor of the wrong place until things could be made right. Our cat was not a fan of all this upheaval.

But where we ended up was better than where we started. Moving across the country from my entire family made me sad. In the ensuing years that distance would be made more difficult by my mom’s bouts with cancer and eventual death and my dad’s sudden death 16 months previous to mom’s. But we weren’t supposed to stay where we were.

Even when we live in the same house, we’re not supposed to stay where we are.

Home, Sweet Home

This post is a part of my 10-Minute Tuesday series. I write for 10 minutes on a one-word prompt, without heavy editing, and see what happens. Today’s prompt is “cross country.”

In 1991, my husband, David, and I moved from California to Florida. We were working as missionaries with Campus Crusade for Christ (known as Cru in the U.S.) and the leadership had decided to move our headquarters.

I wasn’t in favor of the idea.

I’m a Californian born and raised. All of my family lived no further east than Colorado. I was leaving everything familiar to relocate across the country. Even my husband wasn’t yet all that familiar. We’d only been married for 6 months.

But move cross country we did. The organization provided a moving company that packed up what we wouldn’t need in the immediate, we had both our cars loaded on to transports, and we headed to the airport in Los Angeles with my kitty in a carrier, drugs at the ready to keep her calm.

Only, we missed our flight, so the drugs wore off halfway through the trip. The stress finally got to me, and I cried there at the gate of the airport.

But, we made it to Orlando and found our way to our new apartment sometime in the wee hours of the night. We were starving, but this was in the days before there were so many restaurants on the road from the airport, so we couldn’t find anywhere to eat.

When we got to our apartment, we noticed that it was not the one the complex had promised us. The teal carpet gave it away the minute we walked in the door. So, we somehow camped out on the floor (the details are fuzzy after 27 years), my cat hiding behind the washer and dryer, and tried to get some sleep.

The next morning, we visited the office and notified them that they had given us the wrong apartment. After asking whether we could live with the teal carpet (no, it would clash with every piece of furniture we owned), we were relocated to a slightly bigger apartment with a lake view at the same price because it was their error.

Everything worked out and we lived that first year plus a few months in that apartment with the grey carpet and the lake view. And we have now been in Orlando for 27+ years. My parents have passed away, my brother is my only family left in California, and our 3 kids call themselves Floridians, though each one of them seems to think they were born for a colder clime.

Go figure.

I love my house, I love my church, I love my friends. I still long for California.

If I could pick up everything that I have here (minus the humidity) and move it back to the hills of Oakland, I would do it in a minute. But that’s not where I’m supposed to be. Everything that matters is here in hot, humid, flat Orlando. I can allow myself to be discontent, or I can embrace my space and trust that I am exactly where God wants me.

After 27 years, I’ve lived in Florida almost as long as I lived in California. My heart would be very cold and hard if I allowed my yearning for a state to overshadow my joy at being “home.”

I can always pretend the cloud formation in the distance are mountains if I squint long enough.

 

Sweet Surprise

For my 30^th birthday, my husband threw me a surprise party. We went out to dinner and were just planning on going home and hanging out. This was before we had kids, just 9 months after we had gotten married and 4 months after we had moved to Florida from my home state of California. Needless to say, my stress level was very high, even though some of those events were good ones. Like the getting married part.

When we got to our apartment, I was met with a sweet group of friends all gathered to celebrate my day. It was truly a surprise, which is often hard to pull off, and a lovely reminder of how much I am loved.

Those kinds of surprises are great. Others, not so much. Like when your favored team loses to a major underdog in the surprise performance of the century (looking at you Virginia). I don’t like those kinds of surprises.

C.S. Lewis wrote a book back in 1955 titled Surprised by Joy, which tells the story of his conversion to Christianity. Although he says it’s much less a chronology of events than it is a look at his life as only C.S. Lewis can tell it.

Surprise. Something unexpected.

I remember when my kids were little and I wanted them to keep a secret about something, like a gift for someone, I would tell them it was going to be a surprise rather than a secret, because I wanted to ensure that they didn’t keep secrets. I knew the stories of abuse that have happened with a relative who would tell a vulnerable child that this behavior would be their secret. They weren’t ever to keep secrets from us.

But surprises are meant to be fun. I like to think of them as good. I think that’s what Lewis found as he came up with the name for his book. He was an atheist. He didn’t know what he would find when he turned back to God. Joy was unexpected.

In some cases, we may wonder why we are surprised at the things God does. We ask Him to provide, and He does it. Sometimes it’s not in the way we expect, so we can call that a surprise, but not the fact that He does it.

It’s not the same as being startled.

It’s different than being shocked.

Some people don’t like surprises, and if I had to guess, I would say that it’s because it takes a modicum of control away from them. Just tell me what’s going to happen already. I want to know what to expect.

But that’s where trust comes in.

I’m not in charge, and if I allow myself to be surprised, I might just be blessed by a God who wants to give me all good things.

Like C.S. Lewis and joy.

 

images from tonnerdoll.com; nameberry.com; crosswalk.com