February 18, 2011 by Sarah
It’s really starting to sink in… in a week and a half there will be movers here to pack us up. I have found myself crying while cleaning the bathtub, mopping the closet, gazing at a nearly-empty garage and staring absentmindedly at the kitchen walls. While I am excited about our future, the price of leaving is hitting me.
My family won’t be able to just stop by. Which means my mom won’t be able to bring me her chicken noodle soup when I’m sick. And we can’t run to the Galleria for a girl’s night of shopping fun.
The beautiful garden we have made may squander and become overrun with weeds, like it was when we moved here. (not that it hasn’t been that way on occasion under my care, but…)
The laying down of roots in one place will no longer be part of my reality. Before the Foreign Service gig came along we were talking about maybe having some chickens in the backyard for eggs, and making a several-year plan on how to improve our property. Although some of those plans have been realized in the past few months, most have been blown away as we made a wish and set our hearts on living overseas.
We may never have another church home that comes close to what we have here. The people in our church are a part of us; we pray for them, mourn with them, rejoice with them, pray for their children and they do the same with us. That won’t change, but the distance will inevitably grow with the years of our absence.
I won’t be in control of my house. Other people living here will either do well by it or they won’t.
I will not be the one to enjoy the gorgeous bathrooms we just renovated. Major bummer, there. I’ll post pics of those another time. That is a topic that deserves a post.
Helen will not remember this home at all. Sadie may not. There will be a chunk of our lives that they have no recollection of. I know that’s true of other times (like when we lived in Italy and Japan before we had kids) but it still makes me sad, probably because they were born in this home and it’s the place where God made us the family we are.
We won’t be part of big family gatherings with Travis’ family, unless they occur during our home leave trips. Which, actually, some probably will, because I guess our presence will be an occasion. But there will be much that we’ll miss.
We won’t have our best friends within walking distance, available for last-minute playdates and late-night fun for the adults.
I’ll miss laying in the hammock, rocking and reading to the kids.
I’ll miss going to the pool on Friday nights with friends and ordering pizza while the kids swim and dive and the adults gab.
Most of all, I’ll miss the people involved in these activities and places. We’ve invested ourselves in their lives, in the friendships here. We’ve invested in relationships with our families, occasionally through some rough patches.
Bigger than all of that, though, is the knowledge that we will continue to invest in the people in our lives.
Travis and I were talking last night about our time overseas with the Navy. The experiences that counted for the most seem to fall into two categories: the people we met and the times we lived outside the realm of comfort. The people who impacted us and, who really shaped our impressions included a diverse group of people like Miko, my Japanese girlfriend who smoked all the time and lived in the apartment 2 doors down, a couple who we would bowl with (who we recently re-united with via facebook!) on the base, and Tony, a restaurant owner in Sardegna who was nice enough to give us winter prices in the summer and would let us practice our Italian with him, while he practiced his English with us.
I hope we’ve done well enough with what we were given here. I hope others have loved us as we love them. I have such a fondness in my heart for the friends and family we will leave behind. And there remains much about Houston that I have come to appreciate that I never knew I would when we moved back here 13 years ago. Enjoy what you have. Enjoy the people in your lives. Don’t be afraid to have the deeper, more-meaningful friendship or relationship. You never know when the day might come that you are picked up and moved elsewhere by the hand of a sovereign Father.
I was going to leave you with some pics of things I will miss about our home in Houston, and I will; but while going through them I noticed a few things I won’t miss. Hope you’ll enjoy them both.
Things I’ll miss:
City Life
Backyard Birthday Parties
With the Annual JUMPY!!!!
The Garden
Weekend Trips to Galveston
Visits to Eve’s Grave
Persimmon Picking
Nature Centers
Family Projects Around the House
What I won’t miss:
Big Projects
Hurricanes!
