I have just moved again, this time with my husband and unborn baby, which is certainly a first! I've never had so much stuff to move, and actually picked up so little, but that's the privilege (well, burden, if you're an Enneagram Two) of being 37 weeks pregnant. You just can't lift stuff very well at all. And climbing stairs!, a young man's game!
Still, I've spent more energy on this move than any other, trying to think through what we'll need in Maryland, and what goes into storage, what can be discarded and how to discard it, what can be used by other friends for the time we're not using it -- months of decisions. I did a lot of the packing, but that didn't mean we avoided the scramble of the final week or the frenzy of the final two days. I'm so glad it's over, I cried. I'm so pregnant, I cried.
Here's what I know about moving: with each new time or place, there are new rules and procedures. I note below that I moved back to Waynesboro twice after having lived there for most of my childhood. It wasn't moving back home, because as I've written about before, home is an unstable concept, hence the adage you can't go home again. Home is not geographical; it's anchored in relationships and expectations and maybe even resources. Each return to Waynesboro meant a different set of arrangements in the house, a different set of expectations from my family, and different ways of living. My bedroom moved from upstairs to nowhere to downstairs. Their style of eating together changed as my sisters grew up. Their way of allocating chores and responsibilities changed. Home changed. Then home became simply wherever my mom was.
In Lancaster, I found a new place to call home. It became where my church family and friends were, the wider the circle, the better. Eventually this became too hard to manage, and I moved to Morocco seeking to pare down my relationships and my expectations for myself. What was God actually asking of me? How big was my family, after all? And where was home? In the last four years, God has reminded me to keep looking for home in his eternal body. Wherever he's being worshiped should feel like home to me. A gift within God's very big grace has been Jake. Jake has also become my home.
And now, the list.
2006
September: Waynesboro, PA to Harrisburg, PA
November: Harrisburg, PA to Tegucigalpa, Honduras
2007
April: Tegucigalpa, Honduras to Waynesboro, PA
August: Waynesboro, PA to Houghton, NY
December: Houghton, NY to Waynesboro, PA (I also "moved" to London, England for three months in here, but for the first time, I was absolutely sure I'd be moving back to Waynesboro, so I won't count it as a separate move.)
2008
August: Waynesboro, PA to Pine Street in Lancaster, PA (These were the happiest years I had in my life up to that point. Things have only gotten better, though.)
2010
June: Pine Street to College Avenue, both in Lancaster, PA (I also "moved" to Black Rock Retreat to be a camp counselor, but again, I was assured of a place again at College Avenue both summer of 2010 and 2011, so I won't count them as separate moves.)
2011
August: College Avenue to Lancaster Mennonite High School Dormitory
2014
June: From LMH Dorm to College Avenue
August: College Avenue to Plum Street (This move was because Joella was about to get married, and Carmen and I wanted to have Bethany as a housemate. Since Bethany owned her own place, it made sense to go to her.)
2016
August: Plum Street to Casablanca, Morocco
2018
August: Casablanca, Morocco to Plum Street (I moved out of Casablanca June 31st, and moved into Plum Street again in August, so I had one month as a houseguest in various places, though it was mainly Plum Street, where my friends endlessly made room for me, and invited me to rejoin.)
2019
July: Plum Street to Marietta Avenue (This was because I got married!)
2020
August: Marietta Avenue to Granite, Maryland (This was because we can live with my in-laws rent-free for a year while I'm not working outside the home, because of our coming baby!)
