Alice and I are preparing to move. We are working our way through the list of things we need to do. Yesterday was ‘the inspection’–a thorough examination by a state employee to check on the structure, plumbing, electrical, etc. Thankfully, it went okay. Just relatively minor corrections needed.
This was our third round of living in Oklahoma, though neither Alice nor I are from here. Our first round of living in this state was college (in Bethany), where we met. The second was after seminary, as we came back to the state to pastor my first church in the rural small town of Medford. This third time was to live in a house in Midwest City, a suburb of Oklahoma City on the east side. This house was our landing spot after our years in Vietnam.
Also, two of our kids lived in the area, including three of our four grandkids. So this seemed the place for us for now.
Reason for the move.
Oklahoma is a good state. I really like the politics. It seems sane.
The weather? I’d give it an average grade. I could live without the tornado warnings every spring. But we are not moving primarily because of the weather.
Why are we moving? Well, it is those grandkids. Our daughter’s family is moving to Oregon and we are going with them. We can be near to three of the four (the fourth moves around, currently in Ohio, her dad is in the Air Force).
All this is kind of funny because I never dreamed I’d be doing something like moving because of grandkids. I remember how I used to hear people going on about their grandkids. I didn’t find it interesting. I thought, “It’s obvious you love your grandchildren, but that’s not an accomplishment. You didn’t do anything.” I thought those people were bores.
Now I am the bore. I see how they can get a hold on you. I didn’t expect it. Now I’m the one who has to refrain myself from talking about them or showing pictures of them (forgive the picture at the top of this article, I couldn’t resist). I caught the bug.
So that’s the main reason we are moving. We hope to find a house in the same neighborhood.
Thoughts about the move.
We are in the process of boxing up and going through stuff. In truth, we have lived pretty lean in recent years. Our big painful downsizing happened when we moved overseas; there was so much stuff to give away or throw away. We learned a lesson from that and have been wary of accumulating a bunch of stuff that would later be viewed as junk. Now, we don’t have a lot of extras. We’ve been able to put two cars in a two-car garage. We didn’t have to use one side for storage.
Things can become a burden, a pain or, worse, even suffocating. Maybe all those things can grow so much they become something like an enemy.
When we buy a new thing, it might make us temporarily happy or give a kind of high. But times it by a thousand and the end result can choke our lives. Jesus spoke of the deceitfulness of wealth that chokes the gospel (Matthew 18:22). Wealth can be deceitful. In our relation to wealth and material things, we should always be wary of its promise of false hope.
In much of the world, people don’t have enough. But in America’s consumerist society, we think it is a good thing to be able to buy more and more stuff for less and less price. But it strangles us.
Jesus also said, “life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions,” (Luke 12:15). The experience of moving will make these words hit home. Possessions become an enemy, or at least a challenge, as we wonder how we are going to get it all in the moving van.
Though in our house we’ve been pretty good at avoiding accumulation in recent years, Alice reminds me that I still have a lot of books. My books were mostly related to ministry. Since I didn’t have an office anymore, they were stored in six different places around the house. As I put them into boxes it makes you wonder: am I ever going to need this book again? Am I realistically ever going to read it or reference it?
A random discovery as I was going through things.
There is another thing, not related to the move except that I found it while going through documents and deciding what was worth keeping. It was a pamphlet from my 30-year high school reunion, which was 15 years ago. In the pamphlet, some alums wrote updates on their family/lives/careers.
Some talked about their marriages (or divorces), their kids and careers. One used most of his space to advertise his business.
But there was one that really captured my attention. I knew the guy. His house was down the street from mine. His was interesting because while most were trying to put on a good front he wrote about a mistake. He wrote: “I was living happily with the love of my life. Then, I developed some bad habits, lost the love of my life, then the bad habits, in that order.”
That’s sad, but I admired his honesty. I thought, ‘If only he changed the order–lost the habits first rather than second, then he could have kept the love of his life’.
There’s still more to go through. What else will I find? As we work through the checklist we realize that all the unpleasant upheaval can bring some good. It seems kind of healthy. It reminds that this world is not our ultimate home. What really matters goes beyond things and homes and locations.