12 Oct Coming Home: A Sea Change

I turn 31 this week. Tonight, I’m thinking back on my 30^th birthday, an evening spent surrounded by the dearest of friends in Washington, DC. I can’t even believe that was only a year ago, so much has changed. Yesterday, I boarded my one-way flight to California, John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane” running through my mind when I wasn’t dealing with toddler outbursts.

Now I’m sitting in a white rocking chair on the deck outside my childhood bedroom; my baby girl is sleeping soundly inside. It’s twilight– a hazy yellow hovers over the hills as the sky fades to blue and then navy. A tiny sliver of a moon is presiding over the valley as an owl hoots quietly in a tree. Crickets chirp persistently and a cow is lowing in the distance (yes, a cow). As I’m writing this, a huge buck nearly gave me a heart attack, crunching noisily along the hillside behind the house. My city nerves are jumpy still, more accustomed to honking cars, wailing ambulances, and people yelling than silence.

It’s strange and beautiful to be sitting in this rocking chair in the very same spot where I commandeered the fire escape ladder in high school to meet a neighborhood boy. My Dad is Mr. Emergency Preparedness and didn’t appreciate my repurposing of his safety equipment.

I’ve dreamed about coming home to California for more than a decade, but as I’ve learned so painfully in adult life, the fulfillment of our dreams is often more complicated and perhaps a little messier than when they exist in the safety of our hearts, pure and uncomplicated by reality. Everything in adult life is bittersweet, right? We’re moving back to my home but leaving half of our hearts on the other side of the country.

The last five weeks of preparing to move across the country, sell our home, and say goodbye to the beautiful life the Lord gave us in DC have been gut-wrenchingly difficult. It’s been stressful, overwhelming, and so utterly humbling. I’ve needed the Lord more than ever before, which tends to happen when the margin in my everyday life that makes me a nice, semi-decent human disappears.

As we bid farewell to our sweet life in Washington, I’ve been meditating on this phrase from Isaiah 55:12 “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace.” As we begin this new life, I’m asking the Lord to make a way for us, a way filled with joy and peace.

A few days before we left I celebrated the birthday of my first friend in DC, giving her a necklace called “sea change.” It’s a pretty necklace but I picked it for the name. We’re both in the midst of a sea change. We’re both stepping into opportunities to trust the Lord as we start new things. As a person who doesn’t like change and altogether loathes transition, I’m nervous about creating a new life, especially when I really liked the one we had before we moved. So I’m asking the Lord that we will go out in joy and be led forth in peace. I’m going to do my best, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to cling to him as my peace and provision when I feel lonely or sad.

What about you? Do you welcome change and transition? How do you handle new things? What do you do to keep your sanity when your margin disappears?