Who Moved my Pillow?

Packing up our Cheetah Winds home.

What does adjusting, conforming, and uncomfortableness have to do with me? Everything! And I am not talking about squeezing into jeans! Adjusting into a new awkwardness. Letting go of the old can be a change to anyone. But to a person who is a nester, it is like a crazy person digging through a garden at midnight looking for a can of sanity. People around you flee and hide until the sun is shining again!

"Hole" - A opening into a hollowed out deep place.
"PEG" - a object needing to be secure a gap.

It was too soon for all of us, in our whittled down version of a family, to find ourselves in a forward path. For over a year my husband was circling in and out of selling our newly updated  near perfect home. The time that we thought was right happened in the spring of 2013. My husband scheduled my realtor friend over to sign a contract. I was given a week to conform to the plan and stage my own home which freaked me out. I was not physically, or mentally geared up for this new awkward passage, but in my spirit I knew I had been prepared. 

But the gate is narrow (contracted by pressure) and the way is straighten and compressed that leads away to life, and few are those who find it. Matthew 7:14 AMP 

As expected, the first day of showing our house, our family had a contract and a short amount of time to be moved.  A plan was laid out and there was no way but forward. I threw myself into preparing for a new adventure of where to live with a question of God's desire.. rent, buy? So many choices! The time span was so rushed and confusing. Trying to conform to the new thing and the new shape of the future! Dealing all along with the emotional loss of the familiar things and evolution of change. All along trying to be healthy and unhook our life from the former things that brought us contentment. We were so grateful for those close that supported the journey and we all noticed the missing masses.

We all like holding on to the familiar things that provides us comfort, joy and security.  Newness is like carving out a hole to try and fit into. Can I adjust or is the labor to hard? The question that always sticks, is this the right path, the right shaped peg for this gaping hole of time?

 “Moving”-transition, loss, produces deep emotions, adjusting, impactful

Come all you weary with your heavy loads  Lay down your burdens find rest for your souls

Our family was tired and still in shock as we moved 4 of us quickly into a 3rd floor, 2 bedroom apartment. With hundreds of lives around us in our small down sized square, we were disjointed, displaced, and though together, alone. Trying to act adventuresome to our upheaval teens when it was clearly unwanted and unfamiliar. Taking care to make the surroundings like home but not really hunkering down. Feeling friends and family stay away as to not touch the fray or upset the loose emotional marbles. Making meals in a kitchen that clearly was not ours was a gross feeling as the small refrigerator froze our food. This was abnormal and awkward. The new normal was hard and I would sit on the sofa with streams of tears falling down my face daily as I grieved for our family, the former things and again tried to fit in to a size that was not our ideal. 

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” ― Andy Warhol

My small refuge.

As I trekked up and down the stairs of the apartment with the dog, I constantly asked the Lord what was this about? My kids were trying to adjust, and my husband felt numb. I had to find my niche to stay sane. So I made a 4 x 6 rectangular corner of my world on the patio my hiding place. I sat there every extra moment and sought the Lord. The old and the forced new didn’t fit. What in my logic had to be thrown out? Low and behold I found what God was forcing me into. He reminded me of a preacher 11 years prior. I did not personally know,him. He spoke words over my sister and myself at the hospice of my mom, that we would write. How did a stranger know our hearts desire and plans?

So on a summer night on the 3rd floor patio of our apartment, I finally found the time and the freedom to explore. I look back and see God was leading me into my future. He directs your path and gives you a hope and a future as you enter into the promise land of things spoken. As I sat googling what I though was to be my blog name for my intended title, the whole path switched before me and I came across my new title for this blog. I can remember the moment and wondering how it arrived though I was present. And then it all came together. “My Camouflaged Heart” emerged.  

And the angel of the Lord went further, and stood in a narrow place, where was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left. Numbers 22:26 KJV

So for me the journey of change was a tiny apartment out of my normal lifestyle to get me excited about a new path. The apartment was not home and we felt like we were sardines in a can. So we hunted and searched for a home to rent as we tackle this season of the unknown and wait for the future to unfold. We pulled up into the last driveway after a day of searching for a place to rest our heads and it felt like the closest thing to a home we had felt in months. So for the second time in 3 months we moved 4 people, a dog and our belongings. I worked again to make it feel like our normal. Joy was leaking back into our hearts as we settled in. We were tired from this strange journey and the second regrouping. 

Strive to enter by the narrow door [ force yourselves through it ], for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. Luke 13:24 AMP

As we drove away from the apartment the last time my heart ached for the foreigners who lived there who called this their home. The financially stressed. The older residents forced out of their homes by their children or death of a spouse. The single parents, like the moms who supported her kids. Or the men who support a home for their family and live in an apartment. I felt like I was abandoning my prayer closet next to them. This large area with hundreds of lives touching by a wall or a view into each others close window or patio. This must be a part of the new compassion of experience God has added to our heart.

A Iris left behind..there is always another bloom.

Our family fought and endured a hard challenge of transitions as God squeezes us into his path and pushed us out of our comfortable digs of a home into a rental. As our vision and understanding is limited, change has had many rewards. Searching of the soul. Adjustment and many questions. An excitement and wonder of what’s ahead. Turning off the old “GPS” of others voices that for years had given us directions that were not our own. A new season of holes being filled and new pegs representing trust that were being whittled as we cling to our family and our faith in the future and await the next step on this journey called life.

So it is with our own spiritual passage of life. I watch those around me having to adjust to life choices as a result of a situation that others forced them to make in a marriage, divorce, aging, illness or finances. I weep and cry for many in theses difficult passageways. I know the transformation will be life changing and impactful. Visualizing what could come, and the heartache of moving that cheese.* You hope the uncomfortable transition will pass quickly as they make the journey to something better and new. That they will slow and hear God's message and love and find he is the peg they need to secure the empty hole.

Journey to any new place is temporal and it leaves a big gaping familiar hole to fill. With the loss, is a new gain. Thus adding with it many large question marks!  So we sit with that question mark before us. With this coming year keeping peace at hand. My husband reminds me, “Faith brings hope, Hope secures the future.”                                                       

I say, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus
                           

Look full in His wonderful face
                                         

And the things of Earth will grow strangely dim
 

 In the light of His glory and grace”

 * Songwriters     LEMMEL, HOWARTH
* Who Moved My Cheese by Spenser Johnson