Moving sucks. It’s not just the packing of boxes, unpacking of boxes, painting, re-painting, registering kids in new schools, learning the ins and outs of a new community, school, work culture that sucks. It’s that no matter how much your kiddos are seeming to adjust, and you are getting along; in the middle of it all… YOU MISS YOUR PEOPLE!

I now spend an average of two hours chauffering kids to events and such each day. This increased time as a MOM TAXI has pushed me into the world of Audiobooks. I first listened to “Seven: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess” by Jen Hatmaker. I learned really quickly this is not the best book to read AFTER you have moved twice in one year AND started a new job while starting kids in a new school. I was not in the right spirit to receive its message. I did take some of the intent from it, and at some point, I plan to revisit.  Even though the message is not for me RIGHT NOW, I did discover the efficiency and convenience that audiobooks provided.

I took a break from the blog/female Christian author genre and listened to a work-related book “4 Disciplines of Execution” by McChesney, Hulen, and S. Covey. You can read more about that in my professional blog post titled “Whirlwind and the WIG,” if you would like.

I revisited the blog/female Christian author genre, again, this time a bit more carefully. I chose “Uninvited: Living Loved When You Fell Less Than, Left Out, and Lonely” by Lisa TerKeurst. Holy, moly. Talk about getting down to the heart of the matter. I am undone by this book and feeling freer than I ever have and at the same time feeling raw, so raw. It is times like this, I miss my people. I need to share the rawness, the part of me that has become undone and vulnerable.

After that, I jumped into “Present over Perfect: Leaving Behind Franctic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living” by Shauna Niequist and let me tell you, the timing couldn’t be more perfect.

This move has sucked. I am missing my people, but “reading” these last two books, I have realized this dish of misery called “moving” is secretly and a dish of “do-over.”

I am getting a do-over. It doesn’t take away that I miss my people and my kids do too. I watched tears stream down my daughter’s face last night as we discussed the sixteenth birthday coming up in December that isn’t anything that we thought it would be, nor would it be in the place we once called home. I know it will be ok. Between the Mom Taxi, the audiobooks, and learning to begin again… we will find the birthday celebration event of the century.

In the meantime, I will hold tight to the things that matter. I will live loved and in the present. And yes, if you are meeting me for the first time, you may see a tear in my eye and hear a rawness in my voice. For this move has left me bare, stripped of my people and working hard to begin again. Only this time I begin a little better than before and leaning hard on a Savior that loves me.