A while ago, I mentioned that we would have to move house again soon. The story of the past couple of months has been a great object-lesson for me about facing uncertainty. I’ll tell you why, and what I’ve learned so far.
Last August we moved into a large, 5-bedroom house along with one of our friends, and another friend joined us for part of the year as well. It was really exciting to have space to share and people to share it with! I had hoped that this might be a place where we could settle for a while and make available for people who need a place to stay. It has been really, really great to combine raising a family with the openness of community living. I’ll miss it.
But we found out in February that our landlord wants us to leave by the end of June so that he can let it out to students again for more money. (A lot more!) So much for my hopes. Neither of our friends would be around for much longer than that anyway, so we couldn’t look for another big house to share. It felt like a giant, disappointing step backwards to look for another smaller house to rent on our own. Coupled with that is the emotional exhaustion of packing up my life yet again to move to yet another impermanent place. After 6 moves in just as many years, I’ve started to feel like some kind of refugee. If there’s a lesson to be learned here about the impermanence of life, I think I’ve started to get it by now!
In desperation and without much hope, I did some tentative research on mortgages. We had tried this angle before without success, and this time around our finances weren’t much improved, and the economy had collapsed in the meantime. I ended up speaking to an incredibly helpful mortgage adviser though, which began a very long and complicated chain of events. It seems almost miraculous, but we ended up with a mortgage and a small house to call our own!
So now is the time when I step back, scratch my head and mutter to myself, ‘Holy crap! What just happened?’
Life is funny that way. We see how things begin, but we have no idea where they might end. And when the end comes, good or bad, it’s just the beginning of something else. Some people preach that ‘everything will work out alright’, because of providence or some idea about ‘the universe’. I don’t. Other people decide that they will probably end up being disappointed in the end no matter what, and so become cynical. I’m not like that either.
I’m learning that any expectations — for good or ill — can be very dangerous. ’God is good’; but I don’t expect him to solve all my problems. My life is not the whole story… just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. So the best thing I can do is keep my mind open, accept whatever comes and work with it.
It is tempting to get carried away with relief that my family and I will hopefully have somewhere to put down our roots and call home for a few years. But if it’s unwise to get distressed by difficult circumstances, it’s just as foolish to get excited. Who knows what the next chapter of my story will bring? I’ll just try to keep a level head and an open heart.
Not to mention an open door 
