A Mover’s story
May 2012
If home is where the heart is…when will my heart realize my body has already moved?
by Johanna
Last week was difficult. Tragedy struck those we were once in community with, in the place we used to call “home”. It was an “in your face” kind of reminder that we’re sort of in limbo here. Unable to go back and “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15), unable to share the story here with someone who would know the background and feel the pain as deep.
What is to be learned when you balance the truth that we are called to be in close relationship with each other, with the reality that those close relationships don’t just happen with a snap of the fingers but take time to grow and develop? How, exactly, does one let go enough of relationships in the past in order to develop new ones with those around them today? And in the letting go, where is the security and comfort of a good friend found while you wait for the time it takes to develop all over what you already had? These are all questions I didn’t think I’d be asking.
The book I’m reading through, “After The Boxes Are Unpacked: Moving On After Moving In” written by Susan Miller, talks about the differences of cherishing and clinging to what was in the past. I struggled to quite understand how this applied to me, of course I cherish those friends I left behind. But how am I clinging to them? If I was clinging to them, wouldn’t I have fought against leaving in the first place?
Literally, as I type, I feel this idea clarifying itself. Maybe the clinging is in my desire to find another Elise, another Michelle, another Tara, or Angie, or Scot & Dee, or Brandi, or Janice, or…the list could go on and on because there are so many that God has placed in my life who I have been so blessed to call friend. Really though, how could I ever find “another” of any of them? Those were ones God handpicked for a particular time, a particular purpose…and today, in a new season, what is the purpose that He is trying to accomplish in me? And why would our God who is so creative and so surprising, choose to work in an expected way, to accomplish something unexpected? Maybe my clinging is in the expectation that who He sends today will be a cookie-cutter version of what He sent yesterday. Of course there are so many who I will cherish no matter where this life takes us and how far we go…but to cling…to cling is to leave my fists tightly closed, unable to grasp the new blessings God desires to place in an open hand.
There was an interesting quote in the book…taken from…”A Place For You”, written by Paul Tournier…”I thought of the trapeze artists, swinging on their trapezes high up under the dome of the circus tent. They let go of one trapeze just at the right moment, to hover for a moment in the void before catching hold of the other trapeze. As you watch, you identify yourself with them and experience the anxiety of the middle of the way, when they have let go of their first support and have not yet seized the second…What is the force that holds men back, which prevents them from letting go of what they would like to let go? It is the middle-of-the-way anxiety. It is the void in which they are going to find themselves before being able to seize a new support. All this to say, we must always be letting go…leaving one place in order to find another, abandoning one support in order to reach the next, turning our backs on the past in order to thrust wholeheartedly toward the future.”
My heart beats faster as I read that quote again. What a perfect illustration for where I find myself emotionally! That “middle-of-the-way anxiety”, to “hover for a moment in the void”…So, it’s ok to “hover”, to feel for a moment that I don’t belong, to feel the void of what I have let go, to feel the fear of what may or may not come to replace it. I am normal. THIS is normal. This is my new normal. 
I will “hover”. With an open hand. As I wait for God to fill it…
Someday my heart will realize my body is already here in Virginia and loving it. I do not know the means by which we shall be reunited, or those that God will use to convince my heart that it can feel at home here….but what is hope if it can already be seen?…
(To read Johanna’s blog in its entirety click here.)
