These last few weeks have been busy–jam packed– with the comings and goings of a healthy, growing, sprawling family. We’ve gone and done and been and seen, and hosted and visited and experienced. The weather has ranged from cool to downright hot, and we’ve embraced every glorious minute.
We have short-timer’s syndrome. Every one of us can feel the quickening now. We are leaving. Soon.
Things are shifting under our feet, it feels. And even as we look at this huge milestone ahead of us, we wonder: what does all of this look like in five years?
The actual move, the upheaval, the settling in, these are the necessary things. We’re planning for them, making arrangements, researching the paths of those who’ve walked before us. But not even the like-minded adventurers who’ve already gone this way can tell us exactly what this move will do to us as a family, as individuals.
No one can no say how sweet Simon, who will not even be two years old when he gets his first passport stamp, will be as a seven year-old. Will he learn to love Legos like his older brothers, even those ours will be one of the only houses he knows that collects them? Will he prefer daal baht to grilled chicken? Will he forever pause before filling his glass at a kitchen tap?
What about 12 year-old Jack? Will he be lamenting that he hasn’t had a shot at driver’s ed? Will he be overwhelmed at the thought of navigating a WalMart SuperCenter? Will he dream of McDonald’s hamburgers and libraries where you can check out as many books as you’d like, as often as you wish? Will he remember the words to ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame,’ or will a 7th inning stretch catch him off guard?
And what about me? Am I going to be the more relaxed mom, who learns to let go as her littles swim into situations that would make most middle class American Mommas shudder? Or am I going to have white knuckles with every car seat-less drive, every bike ride that doesn’t feature a helmet … forever?
We don’t know. But what we do know is that in five year’s time, we will be changed. All of us. For better or for worse. Our hearts will be shaped a little differently, our worldview will shift. Our priorities will have been chiseled into a new order by both necessity and exposure. We will not be who we are today.
Not that we would be, anyhow, had we ignored the call and chosen instead to stay rooted here, in this place. Life would keep marching forward, forcing us to grab on to the new even as we remember that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. When we moved to Washington from the east coast, the shift was seismic and total. Today, we are visited by family and friends from the east coast and marvel at the differences that even 3,000 miles brings. How much more, we wonder, will 7,000 deliver?
All of this presses on me, and I am reminded, gently, that we are who we are no matter where we are. Location is irrelevant to God. The things He is teaching me here, the things He will show me there … they are all from Him, and they are all good. If my 3 year-old forgets what cars are supposed to do at stoplights, if my 14 year-old prefers Indian films to Hollywood spectacles, well … those are the tiny things that will set them apart from their American peers, yes … but they will not flaw them, they will not make them somehow less. They will simply make them into the image that God has had for them all along.
I rest in this, on the days when I walk into my favorite yarn store and feel my heart tug at the notion of not doing this again for years at a time. I rest in this as I look at my sniffling teenage daughter and realize that I do not fear malaria or typhoid or encephalitis. I rest in this as I hear other parents talk about signing their kids up for fall soccer, or visiting the aquarium, or doing any number of very normal, very routine things that will be part of their shared experience with the masses.
Our lives are not going to mirror the typical American experience, and we will all come out looking slightly different than we expect. Maybe forever, maybe just for a season. But regardless of the unknown outcome, God is in it. And, despite hardship or challenges, we know what that looks like, always: It is good.