When you let a place become your home, your body learns it
by heart. In the five years we spent in
our Scenic View house, I learned instinctively how far to walk to the
refrigerator in the middle of the night, how to navigate the bathroom without a
glint of light. My feet knew the tread
of the hall even when my mind was still asleep.
And the neighborhood? My running
shoes knew the cracks and breaks in the sidewalks, my lungs knew just where the
hills peaked and ebbed, my spirit knew where to cross the street because a
ferocious, four-legged beast lurked in hopes of having runner for dinner. The benefit to a good home is a sense of
autopilot…the freedom to concentrate on other things.
Moving has upended all of that. Every night, I dream that I am walking our
old hallway, feeling the aging wood floors beneath my bare feet, only to wake
up to a crying child and remember, yet again, that I have to stumble up two flights
of stairs to get to her in this temporary home.
I dream the street, the curve of the cul-de-sac, the twinkling skyline
just across the river. Every day, I find
myself heading to the window to see if the neighbors are home to play, only to
find a different house across the street.
I’ve physically moved on, but my mind hasn’t quite let go.
This move is ripping out my systems, my balances, my safe
places; I can no longer claim the desirable community of Fort Thomas as a part
of my identity. I no longer feel safe
running in the dark. I don’t know these
new (temporary) streets and their dogs well enough to risk that. I am moving to a community that I hope is a
good one, that I hope I’ll love. But I’ve
never even seen it. I sense that this
reprogramming of my brain is both hard and good.
It reinforces the importance of a stable home, both to us as adults and
to our children. It also forces pathways
in my brain that have been dormant…trained, if you will…to fire up again. It demands that I evaluate who I am and what really
matters when my address is stripped away. It is both a stripping and an awakening.
It also makes me think of the importance of establishing
history, of creating a home, with God.
What if, in the turmoil of moving, I found my familiarity, my stability,
in my Father. What if I could better
navigate our transient state because the pathways to Jesus remain unchanged,
like Jesus Himself. What if I invested
the same amount of time in my faith habits as I do in making my home feel like a home?
I’m praying that we’ll love our new neighborhood, that we’ll
be able to look around and say, “God, this is so good. You prepared this place with us in mind.” And while I wait, I am hoping to re-establish
some habits and rituals in my faith that fell by the wayside when the routine
of school came to an end. This time,
while trying, is a gift: a stripping of the familiar so that I have no choice
but to focus on what really matters.
