Ch-ch-ch-changes

This whole moving thing has brought out a little chaos in our home. Rocky has been spending a lot of time at the new house getting it ready for us and meeting the contractors, so I’ve been home alone a lot with the kids (or the cuckoo birds, as I call them). Between packing, and cleaning, and cooking, and laundry, and parenting, and self-care (ha! What’s that?!), we’ve all been a little frazzled by all the changes happening around here.

I’ve noticed the kids are acting particularly anxious. Acting up, shutting down, fighting, crying, whining. And it got me thinking about how scary this must be for them. Moving to a new house. Not knowing how things will change. Not understanding distance and time. I’ve found that my grace for them during this time has been particularly difficult because of everything going on, but extremely important for the same reasons. Don’t be fooled; I’ve definitely lost my cool with them and lacked patience when it should have been easy to give. But the more I think about this move from their perspective, the more I want to slow down, hug them, reassure them and talk through what moving means.

See for them, moving means fear. It means broken, angry, sad, hurt, alone. It means separated. And even though they can’t articulate to me what they’re feeling, they can say, “I don’t want to go to the new house. I want to stay here.” And I hear their heart, feel their fear, sense their anxiety. I know that for them, moving somewhere new is not exciting or adventurous or fun.

The last time they “moved” they were taken to an office building in a high-rise downtown where a white couple came to take them “home.” All their precious belongings were crammed into backpacks too big for their tiny frames and they wore matching jackets and jeans that had been secured by belts made from a shoelace. The time before that, they “moved” from mom’s house to auntie’s house and even though things were bad there, they were with family. They still felt like they were somewhat home. Who knows about the times before that, where they lived and with whom. They were 4 and 5 when we picked them up that Monday afternoon in October. They were scared and they cried. They had no idea where they were going, who we were or if they were ever going to see their family again.

I’d imagine they’re feeling a lot of those same things right now.

And so we’ve been having a lot of discussions in our house. A lot of, “Everything will stay the same except for our house. Our house will be bigger, and you’ll have a bigger room and a backyard to play in. And we’ll even get a dog and in the summer we can get a small pool and water guns and play outside. You will still go to your same schools. Rocky will still drop you off and pick you up everyday. You will still see your family on Thursday nights. All that will change is our house.”

Sometimes I can feel them relax into me when I’m holding them and repeating this mantra. Everything will stay the same except for our house. Other times they still tense up, hold tight.

And I think of my Father in Heaven. How often I have been paralyzed by change, fearful of the fallout, wondering if I can trust. I can look back and see His faithfulness and His good plans and I can be comforted even in the fear. At 33 years old I am able to do that. But my kids? They’re 5 and 6. When they look back, they don’t see goodness and faithfulness. They see horrors, violence, broken promises, abandonment. They see hell. And all I can do as I hold them tight is pray to Jesus that He can help them to see they’re not there anymore. Everything will be okay.

Everything will stay the same except for our house.