A moving experience

We are moving. Moving is something we do. Often. The mere thought of the labour involved makes me feel nauseous and dizzy, but I know that it too will pass, and we have already packed ten boxes. Those who know us well will not be surprised. The great thing is, we are only moving five kilometers, up the road to Joubertina.

I have moved so often that it does not take long for a house to become a home to us. We have stayed in such an assortment of dwellings, and I loved them all, in different ways. The incredible thing is, they were all beautiful, and we were blessed to have lived in them, for different reasons.

My parents lived in the same house for thirty years, and I lived with them for my whole life, until I moved out. But, in my adult life I have moved about 50 times! Sometimes across continents, sometimes cities, towns, around the corner, next door. I don't know why it has been like that - it just has.
So, we are doing it again...

Looking back I am so grateful for all the homes. There were the seaside homes, with the waves lapping at the bottom of our road, a mere 2 minutes walk away. There was the country home, with a wide verandah with a mountain view spread out before us. A favourite was the lagoon house, with a panhandle down to the lagoons edge, visited by pink flamingoes, and me, quite alone, swimming out silently amongst the ducks.

Long ago there were the England houses, double glazed, cosy with coal fires, snow on the road outside the cold stone walls. There was the semi in Observatory which God chose for me to be in when my first husband left, an unlikely haven, but a shelter it was, at the time. I remember a suburban house with fondness, my children little, L and I and them becoming a family there.

A swimming pool, or some watering hole, featured in most of the recent homes, because I love water. There has been no water here in the Langkloof. A drought stricken place lately. Nevertheless, there has been living water here, in a very real way for us. And, of cause there is always the Kouga, and the rock pools, and the big blue dam up in the Hoek.

But now we are moving to town. This time there is definitely only one reason why. It is because we really believe that God wants us to go. There is work waiting there that needs to be done. Children that need to know that He loves them. And more than that - we want to go.

So, goodbye, goodbye dear outside room, beneath the beloved Syringa Tree. Goodbye the open view out from our bedroom window, down the orchard valley of Twee Riviere, and up the steep mountains of the Tsitsikamma. Goodbye Louis sheep strolling through our land, morning and evening, the shepherd cries, the little bleating lambs. Good bye the vegetable garden, so overgrown now - thank you for an abundant crop - we ate well. Goodbye the dirt road, the drunken wanderings and voices passing by. We said we would live in this house for a year , and wait, and see what God wanted us to do, here in the Langkloof. It will be exactly a year.I will miss all we leave behind, like always.

But this life, it seems,is not just to be lived out here, on this platform of grass, with the large trees behind us, the open valley stretched out before us. We, L and I, have accumulated many different skills in our great and motley careers. If God can use them, then we are so excited.

So we go to a ground floor flat in the school hostel. At this point it is not all clear. Does God ever reveal all His plans at once? Of cause not. We are sad, but happy too. The friends will remain. We are not going far.