Stability with Mobility…

It pays to be organized, especially when you move a lot as we have been doing over the last two years.

Our teacher daughter said,

“I worry about you moving all the time, it must be so disruptive especially as you lived in the same house for almost 30 years.”

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Paris lived in the same house all her life too until she started her roving as she bounced from place to place looking for herself,

“I’m young!”  she said as if that made it all right!  I appreciated her concern.

The Benedictine Rule I have studied over the years calls for stability and I would have been the last person any of my family and friends would have said possessed that attribute.

Until I married and had a family I did not often stay in one spot for any length of time.

When I moved again Mummy would say to Daddy,

“What have we done?”  referring to the diplomatic lifestyle they had led with me tagging along.

From a very young age I grew used to moving from country to country, school to school, from house to flat.

And no matter where I fetched up the plates were always in their customary spot in the kitchen, I could reach for the tea and find it next to the honey and the marmalade, my clothes hung in the same order as always, I could put my hand on new bars of soap or tubes of toothpaste and Jesus travelled with me in my heart.

The habit of consistent-placing-of-familiar-objects-regardless-of-global-location stuck and my independent children now joke using this oft quoted snatch of dialogue,

“Where’s the yeast?”

“In the fridge, top shelf, behind the milk.”

Where else!

Stability with mobility!

Then things changed!

As newly weds we moved into our new home with the plan to be there no longer than a year.  Something happened and all of a sudden thirty had flown by.

Our children enjoyed thirty safe and secure years within the solid bricks and mortar of our home, the familiar hearts of our community and, most importantly, the loving arms of happily married parents who taught them about the constancy of God, without changing their address once!

Thirty years of stability without the mobility until, that is, our children left and the house fell silent.

Then we sold up and enjoyed two homeless years of minimal responsibility with no repairs, property taxes, furnishings, entertaining, pets and routine, we travelled and reveled in re-discovering the person we fell in love eons ago when we were very young.

We lived in London again for 6 months, Florida as Trusted House-Sitters for 4, Lindale with my mother-in-law for 5 months, in a hotel for 2, at a friend’s house for 1 month and finally in our flat for the last 6.

We became experts at living out of a suitcase, rotating half a dozen shirts, a few pairs of jeans, having a P.O.Box and filing our taxes from anywhere!

It pays to be organized and moving is disruptive but technology allows us the same phone number world-wide and the devises to enable contact with our loved ones at the touch of a button.

And Jesus is always there in my every-day.

For He is Risen and with us now!

Alleluia!

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