Moving Forward

Our family calendar, the final weeks before our move

Lately I’ve been having trouble keeping track of time. I don’t mean that in the sense that I’ve been forgetting to look at my watch and then keep ending up arriving ten minutes late for church. I mean that I’ve been having trouble remembering if it’s Monday or Saturday or any other day in between. I’ve found myself in the middle of a conversation, recounting recent events and stopping to think, “Wow! Was it only yesterday that that happened?” The sheer volume of activity that my days have contained sometimes makes them feel like they must have taken weeks to conspire, when in actuality they merely took hours. Clearly, I have no control of time. That seconds hand keeps ticking steadily around while my life races wildly forward.

That fact makes this blog post difficult to write. It’s only been two weeks since my last post but it feels like it’s been a lifetime. There are too many stories to write, too many pictures to share, too many emotions to express. It would be impossible to do it all, so I’ll have to settle for a highlight reel…. Actually, it’s more like a high/lowlight reel. Our little family of Js has experienced a lot of ups and a lot of downs in the past fourteen days.

On the morning of July 15^th I loaded our car with three children, two dogs, two fish, half-a-dozen suitcases, a few tote bags, three Civil War reenacting rifles, and one box filled with miscellaneous whatnots and we all headed down the highway. Destination: Chesapeake, Virginia. After about an hour of driving I called a friend to inform her of our progress. We delved into an emotional conversation and before I knew what had happened I was crying behind the wheel. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. The tears came slowly at first but with every new thought that ran through my head a bigger tear would well up in the corner of my eye and then roll down my face and fall onto my lap. Soon I was sobbing hysterically, gasping for breath. There came a point, when I could barely see out of my fogged up sunglasses and had begun questioning my reason for living, that I decided I’d better pull the car over. This is as close to a mental breakdown as I’ve ever come. We rolled into the nearest rest stop and I picked-up my phone, intending to call someone for help. Before I could decide who would be the unlucky party to receive my frantic plea, my gaze settled upon an email I’d received from a friend the previous night in reply to a complaint-filled message I’d sent her after an awful day of moving. She wrote, “Jennifer, You have to move forward, even with a heavy heart.”

Keep Moving Forward. I read the line a couple times over. Her words resonated in my head and renewed my battered, broken spirit. I caught my breath, dried my eyes, took the kids and the dogs for a potty break (an extremely successful one, since everyone pooped in one fell swoop), and we got back on the road. The journey was a painful one but I pushed us onward, repeating my friend’s advice quietly to myself, “Jennifer, You have to move forward. Keep moving forward. Keep going.” Fourteen hours after we left New York we finally arrived in Virginia.

The days that followed flew by in a blur, as if I was strapped into the front seat of a rollercoaster car. Up and down and around, my emotions climbed and plummeted at a speeding pace. On Wednesday I signed the lease at our new rental home and picked up our keys and on Thursday some friends of mine (whom I first met when our husbands were all stationed together in New York but who moved to Virginia two years ago) threw me a “Welcome to Virginia” fondue party. Up.

Then I received word from James that he was given pull-in duty and he wouldn’t be getting off the ship on homecoming day. Down. I began decorating our new home by laying down a fresh layer of living room paint and assembling a new breakfast nook. Up.

I choked back tears during Sunday worship service at a new church, realizing that it would take a very long time for any other congregation to feel like a church family to me the same way the one I left behind did. Down. I received a phone call and an email and a facebook message from friends who let me know I hadn’t been forgotten. Up.  Our personal property shipment arrived at last and our house was filled from wall to wall with boxes beckoning to be unpacked. Down. My mom flew in from California to spend two weeks with me and the kids! Up.

I caught a terrible cold that knocked me off my feet. Down. I pushed through the sickness anyways and had most of the house unpacked in two days. Up. Both the fish, unable to withstand the constant stress of the move, died. Down. My sisters surprised us for a visit. Up. Johnny learned to walk! Up higher.

We tried yet another church that wasn’t right for us. Down. Our insurance company informed me of a price hike for our homeowner’s, car, and renter’s policies. Down lower. The list could continue, but I think you’re beginning to see the picture. One moment I would be lifted up with excitement and adventure and the next I would be plummeted into despair. Like a theme park thrill ride, my life for the past two weeks has been on a continuous track of unexpected drops, sudden sharp turns, loop-da-loops, and accelerations.

I’ve never liked rollercoasters. I’m not much of a thrill seeker. The few times when I’ve caved to peer pressure and agreed to accompany someone on one, I screamed like a bad actress in a B-rated horror movie. But once you’re on the ride, like it or not, there’s no getting off. That’s a scary thought. I hate the feeling of being completely out of control. I want to control my own speed; I wish I could control time itself. I am dreaming of the long-gone days when my life was simple and slow paced. But with James’ homecoming on the horizon, traveling steadily nearer and bringing with it many more complicated emotions and anticipated adventures, I think that this is just the beginning. There’s no going back. No getting off. No stopping. We have to keep moving forward. My friend is right about that. We do have to move forward, even with a heavy heart, because there’s just no knowing what tomorrow might bring. It quite possibly will be something unimaginably grand….