So this last week all the planning and packing finally climaxed in a four-state, twelve-hour drive in a U-Haul filled with household treasures followed by a Honda Odyssey filled with better ones. And I’m happy to report—despite the tears at not wanting to leave friends, the desperate cries for potty breaks, and the three-year-old scowling at me across three of those states for eating the last of the gummy bears (“You no can eat all the gummy bears, Mommy!”)—we made it. In fact, we were so excited to finally cross into Virginia that my five-year-old expressed joy for all of us by swatting his sleeping brother in the head to let him know that we had arrived. (“But, Mommy, I just wanted to tell him we were in Virginia!”)Still as thankful as we were to be in our first house and to be meeting new friends, I found myself vowing to never follow a moving truck again. Because even as we walked through the house that first night, the empty rooms seemed to echo our displacement and remind us that while we were home, we were not yet “home.” Nothing about it was familiar and despite being "ours" it didn't feel that way. And yet, the next day as the rooms began to fill with moving boxes, and we eventually tucked the kids into their beds that night--safe with their own blankets and stuffed animals--I could feel my heart catching up with us across the miles.
I have a friend who herself has survived multiple moves including several international ones, and she wisely assures me that “home” is wherever your family and your stuff is. Her wisdom mirrors another: that your heart lives where your treasure does. And since this is the case, when our treasure is somewhere other than here on this earth, when we choose to store it up in heaven, when we invest in the intangible, we shouldn't be surprised if we sometimes feel the same sense of displacement and disorientation that I've been experiencing of this last week. Because if I've learned anything in the moments of playing hide-and-seek with the kitchen utensils, it’s this: in this life, we are in transition. And more often than not, this life is simply a grand moving adventure in which we're gradually relocating our treasure, one box at a time, to our better more permanent home.