We Are Moving

A couple of months ago I alluded to an extended time of impending change.  That time is upon my family.  Around Christmas we started talking about what it would look like to move away from Bellingham and relocate to the east side of the cascades.  As we talked and wrestled with the idea the reality of it began to set in and gradually we realized that it was, indeed, time for us to move. 

That realization came as a major blow to our family.  We had, really, just been creating community in Bellingham, so it seemed, though where we are is the culmination of 10 years living in one place -- finishing college, getting married, bringing two boys into the world and finally settling in a church and neighborhood at which we feel connected and have a support network.  Along the way has been immense spiritual growth and healing for my wife, several places to live, and, for my part, an uncertain construction industry that has seen me bounce through employers like a pinball.

I have found it incredibly hard to articulate why we are moving as the mitigating factors are complicated and twisted and don't flow in linear thought but at the end of the day the sense that we are making the right decision is unmistakably clear even through the lenses of the sorrow of leaving a place we have come to love and the anxiety of starting somewhere new.  

And so we have started to pack and tie up the countless loose strings that ultimately tie a family to a place and we have entered a time of sustained chaos as we sort our belongings and pack them away for the long trek somewhere new.  But it is the goodbyes that are the hardest.  Leaving behind the watering wholes and coffee shops and restaurants we love and Galbraith Mt. (mountain bike trails, the importance of which I will not understate, there have been times that my forays out on my bike were the difference between complete emotional collapse and the energy to make it through the week).  But hardest is letting go of the community it was so hard to create in the first place. 

Yet there is a still small voice in the midst of the chaos and sorrow calling us forward, out of Bellingham, and into something new and when I take a moment to listen I can hear clearly the voice of God and I know that our decision is a faithful decision and when we act in faith we are blessed.  That is not to say it will be easy -- in any way -- at first. 

So we look ahead at the next two weeks with anxiety, stress, and continued sorrow as we grieve all that we will leave behind.  But we are fortified by the presence of Christ and will take the challenges that lie ahead head on, with confidence and faith.