New Growth

I’m moving. Out of the dream house and into a new house. I’m moving to North Carolina, which is amazing and great. Yet I’m moving away from people and places that have twined themselves around my heart. I never thought I’d move twice in one year, just as I never imagined I’d marry Jonathan. 

I’m tired of moving. I’ve moved six times, counting this one, since Samuel was born. That’s an average of once a year and it hasn’t been pleasant. I like to settle in, make my mark on whatever house I’m in. Decorate. Stretch out and luxuriate. There hasn’t been much time for that and I miss it. 

Yet, I know that this move is important for me. I know that it’s right. We need a quiet place to grow as a new family with some shelter from prevailing winds.

I haven’t blogged about the move because it’s hard for me to refine a consistent emotion attached to this time. I think I’ve felt everything I could possibly feel. I just keep coming back to the truth that I know this is right for us...and often times what is right is painful for a time. 

There are so many things I can’t wait to experience again, like Fall leaves, and hot cider, and that smokey aroma in the air just before it snows. I’ve wanted to live in North Carolina for most of my life really. Andy and I met and went to college at a sleepy little Bible school about an hour from where I’ll be living now. I even have a few college friends still living in the area that I hope to reconnect with. 

The new house is open and honest with a wrap around porch. We’ll have chickens. I’ll go to a farm stand regularly. There will be plenty of places to explore and trails to hike. Instead of vast ocean views I’ll have the tumbling sounds of streams and rivers. 

I need this. There is a comfort to people knowing my story here in this town, but it’s a comfort that burns and stings more often than it soothes.

I know there is a brokenness inside me that will never heal perfectly or cleanly. Yet, I don’t think that’s the goal. I don’t want to be who I was because that would be denying the forceful events that have changed me so deeply. I don’t think the goal is reversal of all these effects. I want to remember my pain with peace and acceptance. I want to shine out of all these cracked and broken places a light that can’t be denied, though it’s light is gentle and never glaring. I want to grow with my husband and children and incorporate these experiences into our lives the way that a tree can incorporate a fire into it’s growth rings. In such trees there is a charred ring where the fire seared and blackened and laid waste, but you can also see clearly the rings of growth before and the rings of growth after. 

I need some new earth, and I’m looking forward to years of new growth.