moving 101

i can’t believe i’ve lived in north carolina for over 6 months! craziness! i started this post quite a while ago (like december!), left it as a draft, and recently remembered that i needed to post it! ha! so without further ado…

josh and i were recently discussing how we’ve adjusted to our latest move much more quickly than previous moves. this sounds a little crazy because i think, “really? like this has been easy!?” but it has been better. for example, when we moved to columbus, i was a hermit for about 6 months. i think we tried even harder this time largely because we were so far away, no quick couple hour trip home from north carolina! so, in lieu of utter depression, we got our butts in gear and settled pretty quickly! so here’s my advice – for a future me gearing up for another move, or for you, if you happen to move far from home:

1. take a deep breath and say a prayer. you’ll need God to get through this!

2. know that you have very little control over most things, but God is in control. and he works all things for the good of those who love him. and his grace has gone before you and prepared things for you in your new home! so just trust him!

3. unpack quickly. this seems weird, but i think i adjusted to our new place so quickly because i unpacked everything within a couple days. seriously. i worked my butt off. it helped though because a place starts to feel like home when you can see all of your stuff and it’s where you want it and can use it. boxes don’t feel that way.

4. find a church asap! this doesn’t mean just picking any church. church shopping is important. josh and i went to several before we found one that felt right, that we agreed on, where we felt a serious potential for friends. what a difference that has made! we made the mistake of attending one in columbus for 6 months (the hermit months) without ever feeling a real connection there – just hoping the next week something would be better. what were we thinking!?

5. once in that church – get involved with a small group/bible study! that’s where real friendships happen. i will treasure my friends in columbus forever, and where did we meet them!? small group! i still wish we were back there with them often, but i also trust that our new friends here can become just as special. (if i had my way, we would have never left columbus, and we’d still be hanging out with the same group of people, because i’ve never been one to have/need a lot of close friends, but i’m not in control here!)

6. get a job! (or at least volunteer or something!) believe me – i miss my non-working days a ton, what a treat! but really, having somewhere to be and something to do has made a huge difference for me. my coworkers tend to resemble a super odd cast of characters in an off-broadway play, but they’re also my little starbucks family, and i’m grateful for them.

7. move on! you can’t welcome new things into your life if you’re holding onto the past. accept that change has come, and that you are wherever you are for a reason. stop holding on to the past, constantly remembering the way things were, and know that things aren’t the same there anyway because change has happened there too. i made the mistake of doing this a lot when we first left columbus, lamenting every thursday and sunday night that we weren’t hanging out with our small group. if i was being honest with myself, i would have realized that my old small group wasn’t the same group that i had left (not to say that it wasn’t great, but it was different, of course!).

so that’s my advice on moving for me or you, but probably mostly me!