Matters of the Heart

It was different, it was lonely at first.  But eventually it became Home.

It’s the place where we brought our baby boy home from the hospital; taught my oldest daughter to read and tried to teach her to ride a bike; watched our younger girl bloom into a social butterfly.

It’s the place where we  bought an old house and fixed it up; stressed over it, worried over it, painted and cleaned and weeded and asked for help and painted some more; and eventually made it our own.

It’s the place where we were alone in the sense of having no old friends or family nearby, but weren’t alone in the sense that neighbors, church friends, and mom’s group friends were always willing to lend a hand.  The kind of lending hand that plowed the driveway during blizzards, mowed the lawn when my husband was out of town, came to birthday parties and playdates for my children, brought dinner over when we had a new baby, and dropped everything to come help when my little girl needed a trip to the ER.

It’s the place where we imagined so many dead ends, but made more than a few dear friends.

And now we’re here, with 1500 miles between us and the friends and memories made.  Haltingly, hesitatingly, not sure what was around the bend, but we made them.

Here, where we had dreamt of going; closer to family, in a beautiful part of the country.  But if every bitter thing is sweet, then mustn’t every sweet thing carry a little bitter taste too?  After all, this is planet Earth.  There are no perfect choices, no perfect answers.  Even in our greatest joys there will always be a little bit of pain.

We count our blessings, and they are many: our little family is growing closer together, the kids are happy and healthy, long sunshiney days beckon us outdoors to explore our new surroundings, dinners with extended family fill a void we felt so dearly.

Yet moving is hard, even when we’re moving towards something good.  When my dear friend asked how our transition was going, she shared this verse with me: “You yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners…” (Ex. 23:9).  This verse brought my friend comfort when she was a young mother who moved often, because it spoke to her of the compassion of God for the foreigner, and how He knows what we are going through.  The message it gave that carried her was this: God knew, even before we did, even before psychologists did, that moving is hard.  Leaving all that is familiar for what is only foreign is hard.

My little family of five left a familiar small town with one and a half grocery stores where everybody (literally) knew our name.  Now that we’re here, I feel a little anxiety driving through traffic and tailgaters and everybody rushing and navigating three freeways just to get to the library.  We’ve been here a month and just yesterday I memorized the route to the local grocery store. (Yes, you read that right.  A month.) And it’s a grocery store where I’m not known to a single soul, and where the checkers and baggers are perfectly polite but no one has time to chat.  I’ve prioritized keeping busy and doing fun things with the kids over unpacking, and the fruit of my priorities tastes a little bit like I-can’t-find-anything.  What’s this in the silverware drawer?  Oh, it’s nail polish.  Where are my spatulas?  No idea.  It’s time to go to the lake – where are the swim diapers?  Again, no idea.  It’s bedtime and I can’t find their favorite story – where could it be?  You guessed it, no idea.

Yet in the midst of the craziness when I can’t find the grocery store, I can’t find a friend to chat with, and I can’t find my daughter’s favorite shoes… there’s one thing I can always find.

I can find it because it filled me up then, when I was at my loneliest…and it sustains me now, when there are moments that I don’t know which way is up.  It’s my Savior’s love, and it’s always at our fingertips.

I can find it in the words of a poem that first hung in a freshman dorm room about a hundred years ago, and has hung in every bedroom of mine since then.  It’s called “He Made Her Because He Loves Her,” by Anonymous, and no, right now I can’t find it, but I remember these words:

I made her in such a way,

That she would need Me.

I made her a little more lonesome

than she would like to be . . .

Only because I need for her

to lean and depend on Me . . .

I know her heart,

I know if I had not made her like this,

She would go her own chosen way

And forget Me . . . her Creator.

The first part of the poem grips me… I made her a little more lonesome than she would like to be… because: Do any of us really like to admit our loneliness?  Yet we all have in common two things: a deep need to be known and loved; and a Father who is able and wanting to meet that need.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our pastor preached last Sunday on how difficulties make us feel distant from God.  Pastor Mark said: when it feels like God is far away, don’t ask, “Are you there, God?”  Instead, ask, “What are you doing, God?”  Because He has promised to always be at work in our lives. And the right question prompts us to look for Him.

Sometimes, when we’re forced to let go of the things we thought we needed, or the people on whom we’ve depended, we find that we need to depend on Him even more closely.  And isn’t a close dependence on Him what He made us for, anyway?  When we’re going through seasons of change, and we ask the question, “What are you doing, God?”  We might sense a gentle, “Teaching you to depend on Me, Child.”

Eventually, I hope to find the right box, the one that holds my favorite poem, unpack it, and hang it in my new bedroom.  But for now, forever in fact, I’ll unpack words from His Word that remind me of His faithfulness.  Words like, “I will never leave you or forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).  Promises I know He’ll keep… because even if I lose my keys, the diapers, the way home, or an old friend, I’ll never lose His promises.

Clinging to Him through times of change together,

Laura Jane