One month.
One month ago the movers came and took all our stuff away from our home in Wolfville, NS and we began our transition.
Since that time
We have traveled 3,700 miles
Made a roundtrip flight from Memphis to Raleigh, NC.
Made our way through time zones:
Atlantic to Easter
Eastern to Central
Central to Eastern
Eastern to Central
Central to Eastern
Eastern to Central
Central to Eastern
Slept in 7 different beds, none more than 6 nights in a row.
Is it any wonder I don’t know where I am or when I am?
Then there is the heat! Every morning my iPad still gives me the forecast for Wolfville. I yearn for a day when the high is 75! We have broken 100 several times, and that is not the heat index! We have definitely lost our heat tolerance!
All our earthly belongings are in either a suitcase, some bins that we take with us, or in a storage unit in Memphis that is packed so full, but…. We know it is there, but where?
I have preached once in a church, and once online, just for me and anyone else who might have watched.
We have begun the process to being Americans rather than Canadians. (Not that easy to do, even if you were born here!). We have reclaimed our US phone numbers. If you want to call, my number is 843-442-3523. Anita can be reached at 843-224-2025. Seemed easy enough until you try to use your Nova Scotian driver’s license as ID. Doesn’t work!
We have had to get car insurance and health insurance. I had to go to a clinic for a sinus infection borderline bronchitis and they wanted me to pay!!!??? Seriously? Can’t I just show you my Health Card?
We have discovered again that dealing with a car is the most difficult/agonizing/frustrating task imaginable! I am treated as if I am 15 and never driven before! Recall we have driven 3,700 miles in the last month!
The others side is that we can get Duke’s Mayonnaise, and we bought gas yesterday for $3.89 a gallon. (For my Canada friends that would be $1.03/liter) So there is that!
Is it any wonder that the word we keep using is untethered.
If you look up the word you see that it means free from. It sounds like a wonderful word, a wonderful state to be free from all the things that keep you tethered, tied down.
But being that free can be very disconcerting!
Over and over again people ask, “So what are you going to do?” “Where are you going to live?”
And the answer is, “We don’t know.
For someone who has never not had a job, someone who has always moved from job to job,, this not knowing is very disconcerting! For someone who has structured his life around the lectionary passage for the coming week, this is strange!
Strange not in a good way!
I find myself wondering about what to do, but also some real existential question. The “Who am I if I am not working” kind of questions. Theological questions like is my worth tied up with what I do? (I know the answer mentally, but gut wise? Still wrapped up with that Protestant Worth/Work ethic.)
And all this does not include the transition to a return to a US that is in turmoil! In the week following our arrival the US Supreme Court said that states could not regulate guns or deadly air pollution, but could regulate women’s bodies.
Untethered.
The other morning I was thinking about the Abraham story, the one where God told him to go to “a land I will show you.” Abraham gets up and goes, but we never get the in-between story. Before he settled in Canaan, did he ever wonder what he was doing? Did he ever wonder how he was going to take care of Sarah? Did he ever question what he had done?
That is the chapter I wish I had right now. As I try to live this story I would love to hear a Biblical story of untethereness!
Stay tune. I will let you know what I learn about this state of being. Even more, I will let you know if/when we are ever tethered!