A Moving Post: Part Two

It’s been a long year.  We moved here just as I began homeschooling the kids.  All by itself, homeschooling was daunting.

Just as the school year started, my neighbor’s boyfriend, and father of her child, left drunk on his motorcycle and was arrested.  She needed me to watch her two year old while she went to get his Daddy.

She was a sweet girl.  A lost girl.  She was a construction foreman with a dream to one day own her own hair salon.  She braided Mackenzie’s hair for the kindergarten blessing service at church.

Two weeks later I would find myself shaking fiercely and swearing in a manner out of my character at that sweet girl’s boyfriend when he stumbled to his bike and tells me he’s headed to a bar.  I felt like I was face to face with the same kind of idiot that killed my brother.  No villain, just idiot.  Lost idiot.

They moved away and a new family moved in.  They had two teenagers and a second grader.  This was a family that saw much turmoil.  At many times I have been injected directly and without warning into their greatest crisis, only to be just as immediately caste out.

All of this has been interspersed with other neighbors’ having their own heartaches where a hand was needed.

I have seen a lot more than I feel it my right to share.  I have felt much like a tourist to some of the greatest tragedies in some of these homes.  They are gutted and I offer a meal or a rest, but then I walk away, changed but unscathed by their fire.

I feel like I am on assignment through most periods of my life.  Every day is before me as a task.  I am to care for my family and any who come to my home.

This makes living in apartments rather challenging an assignment as there are many who live right outside your door.

The kids and I began the school year by learning Psalms 23.  It became my anthem for the year.  Over the last few months Psalms 23:2 became my prayer.  “…He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters…”.

I was praying for some quiet waters.  Namely, I wanted isolation for my children and quiet for my soul.  We had spent so many months quite literally leaping from flaming crisis to crisis, most not even our own!  It was time for rest.  I craved quiet waters and a chance to grow fat on the Word.

This of course meant we must move.  I explained this to God and felt certain we were in agreement when I asked him for my dream.

I was enjoying my second third cup of mid-morning near afternoon coffee when my good friend Cat calls me the next day.  She wants to know if I want anything from Costco.  Every girl needs a friend who calls from Costco.

I can’t think of anything I need, but we wind up chatting about our moving plans.  It was during this chat that Cat says something that no girlfriend should ever say to another girlfriend living in a crappy apartment surrounded by asphalt.

“Maybe moving right now isn’t God’s best for you.”

“Cat, I’m going to tell you something that I haven’t told to anyone.  I had a dream last night about that very thing.  It’s made me sick.  I’m thinking we are supposed to stay here.”

I dreamed that I stepped out on my porch and immediately noticed a chill in the air.  I looked down at my neighbor’s porches and saw that Louise, recently empty nested fifty something and Sandy, also recently empty nested fifty something where having a chat.  They were bundled in blankets and cackling while they visited over coffee.

In my dream I felt happy that these ladies found each other.  And then I wondered what I was still doing living here because I wasn’t supposed to be here when Louise became an empty nester.  Her baby is leaving for boot camp in the fall.  After we move.

I woke up actually toying with the idea of staying here awhile.  And when Cat said that maybe moving wasn’t God’s best for me, I knew immediately she was right.

I know I woiuldn’t feel as calm about this whole thing if it wasn’t for the fact that my prayers for quiet waters have been answered, even in the very place I told God it was impossible.

That’s another post.  No sense writing a book.