Moving. Again.

March 14th 2011:

I have done this so many times.  It makes me sick.  No, really.  There's not a lot of sentiment to be found here today.  I'm really, really over it.

I'm moving again.  To a new house.  Five years later, I still haven't found a home.  Five years later, I still have never settled in.  And I am so tired of it.

I know why we came here.  Before ever moving in there was a rainbow, a promise of healing.  But the healing wasn't for me.  The healing was for my sister.  Trout Court was always about my sister.

She moved in just days before one of the biggest chaotic seasons of her life.  The promise of healing was for her.  And I was blessed to watch the process.  As if I got a front row seat to watch God bend low and stitch her wounds up.

I got to be there the night that a miracle, eight years in the making, finally blossomed.  As she fell in love with her best friend.

Trout Court was all about my sister.

Nothing magical happened to me there.  Nothing transformational.

So now that I'm packing up, ready to go yet again, I can't help but stare at the walls.  And whisper quietly to them, "I wish we'd had a better relationship".  "I really had hoped you'd be home.  That I'd stay here longer than a year.  That we'd go the distance."

But Trout Court wasn't about me.

So I'm throwing away papers and I'm sorting through books and clothes.  Pictures came off the walls last night and this morning I unplugged my alarm clock.

Almost every old chapter in my life is coming to an end.  And I'm feeling so strange about it all.  Like God is purging me.  Of my job, of my living situation.  Of my pride.

I had plans.  To leave again.

And something in me is shaken.  Something in me is grabbing hold of a new aspect of Jesus.  Of Abba Father.  That confounded sheet of butcher paper is laying in front of me and Papa is leaning over my shoulder, excitedly waiting to see what I'll draw.

I just want freaking directions.

Forget all this liberty stuff.  Forget all this free will stuff.  Forget this, "I'll be with you wherever you go," stuff.

Only I would be mad that I madly love and walk alongside of a gracious, creative Creator.

Only I would get mad that I'm not being bossed around.

But I have a choice to make.

And I'm here to tell you, I'm tired of leaving.

And I'm tired of living a boring story.

And sometimes a better story involves leaving.

But I don't want to leave.  I just wrote that on my butcher paper - with a big, purple crayon.