This last week was moving week for us. It’s crazy how normal life halts for those twenty four to forty eight hours as you transfer your life, your “normal”, from one house to the next. There is nothing quite like taking all of your belongings, tossing everything into boxes and having friends and family lug your personal items from house to truck, and then truck to house. Don’t even let me get started on unpacking. Packing isn’t so bad because you have the excitement of moving into your new place. You get to re-evaluate all of your ‘stuff’ as you box it up. “Do I really need that? Do I use that? Do I even know what this is?” It’s a great time to declutter – garbage the junk and sell or donate whatever else you don’t need (like one of your husbands four tool bags . . . But who is counting?). All of this, as much as it’s good and fun and exciting and wonderful, it is a lot of work and puts a ton of stress on your body. I can’t imagine navigating a whole new city or throwing a new job into the mix. For us, we decided to have our house built. That means that for the last seven months we have been waiting and ready to move. I know for myself, the idea that we will be moving and the thought of all of the details to put in order before then has been sitting at the back of my mind, unsettled. Moving is an upheaval, a change, a stroll into uncharted territory. Apparently it even makes the list of the top five most stressful things that we do in our lifetime. Whether or not you recognize that stress, it’s still there, sitting in the background, wearing on your body and soul.
You see, knowing all of this, I was okay letting the stress of moving have the final say. I felt stressed, and the “list of top five most stressful things” threw ‘moving’ on there which validated my feelings. I never gave a second thought to feeling anything else during this time because I knew I had a lot going on. I never gave a second thought, that is, until my father in law said something to me at church on the Sunday before we moved. He asked me if I was excited for Saturday. We were going to get possession of our house that coming Friday, but Saturday was the day we had asked family to come down and help us move. Was I excited for Saturday? I responded to him like this: “I am excited for the ‘moving’ part to be over.” He laughed and said, “It will be fun!” Fun? Are you serious? I had never equated the word ‘fun’ with all of the packing, unpacking, throwing out, donating, selling, lifting and cleaning. But, as surprised as I was in the moment by his comment, it really did make me think about my perspective. If my father in law can see moving and associate the word “fun”, why do I have to associate “stress”? It was in that moment that I decided to change my perspective and try and see the upcoming move as fun.
That sounds like a nice end to my story. We moved into our new house, we had a lot of fun with everyone and magic cleaning fairies came and unpacked and cleaned for us . . . Oh, and we lived happily ever after. The end. Nope. A couple days after my revelation to choose joy, I was hit with a nasty cold. My cold was accompanied by the worst hoarse voice I’ve ever had. So not only was I sick, but every time I spoke people would throw on their face masks and start popping vitamin C. Being sick made packing up boxes and moving ten times harder. Each time I would haul anything thing down to the garage I was breathing so heavy I felt like I was eight hundred pounds overweight. This, my friends, was plague number one of moving week. (Yes, I know, calling these plagues is a little dramatic, but you get my drift!)
My cough subsided during the night on Thursday and by the grace of God I was able to have a great sleep that night, even though I felt like a kid anticipating Christmas morning! We got possession of our house on Friday morning. My husband and I wanted to move some stuff in that day to get a head start and then have a sleepover in the new house. We were so excited. Byron’s dad moved over the mattress of the guest bed for us and we snuggled in for the night, excited to officially get the move on for the next day. It’s always strange sleeping in a new house, the creeks, the furnace sounds, all the unfamiliar noises end up waking me up often. Around one o’clock in the morning I woke to a beeping sound. The fire alarm in the room was blinking. What in the heck? Why? I woke Byron up. We messed around with it and finally, twenty minutes later we were able to shut it off. An hour later it started beeping again. Because I was anticipating that this was ‘going to be an all night thing’ I dragged my pillow and a blanket into our master bedroom down the hall, made up a bed on the floor for myself and laid down to sleep. Byron said he would be able to sleep through the beeping . . . I on the other hand, would not be able to. So, even though our Thursday night sleep was glorious, Friday night was not so much. We went into moving day on Saturday with about five hours of sleep. The plague of the mysteriously beeping fire alarm. Plague number two.
Last week I had checked the weather and had saw that it was supposed to snow on Saturday. It’s September, people. Again, out of all of the days, it was forecasting the first snowfall of the season on our moving day. Of course it was! And not only that, but as the week went on the forecast kept getting worse. We were upgraded to a winter storm warning and were supposed to get around eighty centimetres of snow within the span of a few days. And snow, it did. While we had friends and family hauling loads of things in and out of the house, bless their souls, the chilly winter storm was getting worse as the day went on. Plague number three had hit.
Now, during all of these moments I kept thinking about what my father in law had said that Sunday before. Those few words which had opened my heart for the Holy Spirit to speak something deeper. Those words, reminded me to choose joy and to see the good. Each time something else happened, when the situation just became a little bit harder, I had to laugh. It was almost like I was being ‘tested’, to keep choosing joy as things continued to get crazier.
On Saturday morning, with all of these things on my mind, I sat down in my empty house with a cup of coffee (because the coffee pot was obviously one of the first things to get moved over!) and spent some time reading the Bible. I knew that if I didn’t seek God’s heart in the morning then it would be harder to embrace the joy throughout the day. That morning I was reading Matthew 4. It says: “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him . . .” First, the Spirit of God led Jesus into the wilderness and it was in the space that He was tempted by Satan. The Spirit didn’t lead Him there and then leave. In the same breath I was reminded that in moments of testing, God is always with me, never leaving my side. Second, the tempter came to Jesus at the point where He was at His weakest physically. Jesus fasted and he was hungry. Honestly, after forty days he was probably starving. It is during his fast (not after day one or day ten but after forty days) when it says that the tempter came to him. Jesus’ body was weak. It’s in those moments, when we have been drained physically, emotionally or spiritually, when we feel like life has dealt us a bad hand or been frustrating, that the enemy of our souls attacks. When life is good and things are going our way we are not an easy target. But, when circumstances pile up against us the bullseye on our back becomes a bigger one. It’s in those moments when we feel the weakest that we can actually shine the brightest for Jesus because it is not through our own strength that we overcome. Here we are choosing Him and letting Him overwhelm us with joy beyond comprehension. After this moving week there is a new meaning to 2 Corinthians 12:9-11 for me. It says: “But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
I am choosing to rejoice in God in the difficulties. We must look to God in the midst of the crazy times. We must admit when we are at the end of our rope and know in our heart that as awful as it may be it is a fine place to be. It is those moments of life where the joy is so evidently not our own. God is glorified in our weaknesses and because of this we are overcomers in His strength.
Refined Joy 