The walls remain bare to a large extent but this will change throughout the coming weeks. The guest room which will be home for our adult children when they stay overnight has yet to be tackled. It is the catch all center for empty boxes and all that has been collected during my second purge. It too is on my list to transform this week.
Since it has been 23 1/2 years since we last moved, I had very little recollection of the grandiose proportions of what a move entailed. As the days have unfolded I am realizing that unpacking and settling are two very different things. Emptying boxes was and is a joy in and of itself. It was like Christmas with each tearing off of the tape and unwrapping of items. It has been a time of wonderful delight! Finding just the right place of everything has been equally enjoyable...life-giving really. At times I can't sleep as my mind decorates room after room in the wee hours of the morning. I'm tired!! haha
Another side of moving has been the myriad of thoughts and emotions circulating within. I continue to walk through this home, while my spirit wells up with deep gratitude: "I can't believe we get to live here!!" This is such a beautiful gift of a home and I am enthralled with all that has been given to us. I truly am basking in it!
During that first week I sensed that it was important to sequester myself and plunge into unpacking and organizing and creating a new home. I continued in this vein last week but soon began to feel that "pull" from the outside world that I "should" reengage with the rest of life. I realized that there were actually aspects of reengagment that I was dreading and I shared this with my Spiritual Director. I acknowledged not only the inner sense I had that this move was a "starting over" time for me, but also the desire, somewhat naive I recognize, in which I hoped that in this new environment I could and would actually interact with life in new and fresh and stronger ways. She reminded me that a move in and of itself is drastic. It's an upheaval in every way. But me, myself and I...am the same woman who locked the door behind me at our former home and the same one who unlocked the door of this new home. I knew that, but I secretly longed to experience my own metamorphosis. I wanted to shed some of the clutter from within, just as I had decluttered our house. I had been living with an ongoing sense of feeling "trapped" by perceived or known expectations by people/life/circumstances. It is much easier to physically remove the unneeded furniture and pack up the decor which takes up too much space in an effort to create a more peaceful setting in a home, than it is to let go of some of the chaos within which threatens to take over me.
My Spiritual Director encouraged me to continue to sequester myself and perhaps set a time of 40 days. Forty days is often a significant period of time in the Bible. I have just finished 40 days of Lent which I expressed in a previous post, was a strange and awkward season this year. Now it seems necessary to set aside forty days to settle, to reflect, to enjoy the incredible gift of this new home, to actually create a type of neutral zone whereby I have time to grow into some of the stronger, more wholesome patterns of living I desire to have. She suggested my "40" days may end up being less or they may require more, but that this would be made clear to me as I go.
I have found the last several days quite difficult. Perhaps I will be misunderstood when I express this, but I have very much craved aloneness. Three Easter Celebrations with family and church family were rich and meaningful but I have missed this much needed sequestered time. My spirit requires this stretch of days. I am convinced of this. Sue Monk Kidd writes a great deal about waiting in her book, "When the Heart Waits--Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions". Early in the pages of her book she pens,
"When you're waiting, you're not doing nothing. You're doing the most important something there is. You're allowing your soul to grow up. If you can't be still and wait, you can't become what God created you to be."
Later she goes on to reveal,
"The spiritual journey is one of becoming real. Waiting can offer us the gift of authenticity. It can help us give birth to a new way of being true to ourselves. As we wait, we discover that it's okay--really okay--not only to imagine who we truly are inside but to say who we are, welcome who we are, and even be who we are."
These will not be easy days for me despite the knowing of how much my spirit needs them. It is always stretching for me to take time for myself, to go against the norm, to risk disappointing or being misunderstood by people. It will require a mind and soul focused on the One who seems to have led me here. It will demand courage to respond to any questions from those looking in as well as responding to the voices in my head which tell me I am lazy and selfish. It will require patience and perseverance in the waiting and discernment to know when the days are completed whether they be an actual 40 days or not. At times it will require flexibility when life asks of me that which holds a value that cannot be dismissed. And it will require an open and waiting heart to receive all that God desires to remove and His plans to create something new.
And so for a season I will continue to quiet my days and stay with God in this time of simplicity and beauty and settling and the creating of the new.
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