packing up

I moved the last few bits and pieces on Sunday, after breakfast and before church. My entire life shoved into just a few boxes and bins. I closed the door with its familiar squeak and took a long, hard look. Let out a long, hard sigh.

Was it relief?

Was it sadness?

Was it excitement or anxiety or anticipation?

Was it fear for what comes next?

I’d like to say that it was a little bit of everything but it’s not--it’s like too much of everything. I am too relieved and too sad and too excited and so, so scared all at once.

My little doggy-doodle, Olive, clearly stressed about this whole situation.

It takes a lot of time and heart and energy to make a space a home. To fill it with love and memories and quirky little keepsakes.

It took four years to make that little place feel like mine, just a few weeks to pack it all up, and only a few trips with my Prius to move it all out.

I somehow managed to build a sanctuary that could be so easily disassembled. Just a few days and the smell of me and all of my things will give way to stale, unlived-in air.

This whole moving thing is just the beginning. It’s all much less about changing life-spaces and more about packing up my life, job, unhealthy-relationship-with-my-work at a Christian camp and leaving it all behind.

The last four years of my life have been about giving, giving, giving and now I’m empty, empty, empty. Empty and so eager to be filled with something more than self.

The last six months have been incredibly hard, faced with the impending end of my normal. The only blessing has been the insane way in which Jesus has met me at every turn-- as a friend who has sat by me as I’ve had hard conversations and made hard decisions, as a High Priest who knows and feels all of my pain, and as my Savior who died for me at my worst and does not love me because of what I do or where I serve.

So much is ending, changing. So many chapter are closing, new ones beginning that it’s allowed me to begin dreaming again.

What makes me come alive?

What is God calling me to next?

And that brings me here: writing this blog post from my parents’ basement, just three months before my twenty-eighth birthday, with no real “plan” for the next six months. Here begins the journey of figuring myself out, of regrounding myself in the beautifully simple Gospel of Jesus.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.