Did I leave well

Moving to a new place, geographically or situationally, can be tough. Change is hard. Yes, it can be exciting to start fresh and leave some things behind that you’d like to forget, but no one has written a manual on how to leave well. And it’s partly because it’s different for everyone. 

I’ve left homes and I’ve left situations. I have no regrets, and I have no hard feelings but my grief is close. I am thankful for this as it would be difficult to leave with hanging unsettled circumstances. I don’t know if I did any of the transitions properly and in good order. One revolving question lingers: Did I need to say goodbye differently? While I wrestle with this question I’ve been searching for truths from God’s word. Who moved, transitioned or experienced change in the Bible who I could get a good word from for me today? There are many. Unsurprisingly, God often uses change to reveal more of himself. 

I landed on Hebrews 11 to work my heart. It begins with an explanation of faith. Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. Of course. Right between the eyes. I need to be reminded that without faith, I would move in my own strength, and that would be impossible. A destruction of the heart.  Oh, and then to make me even more strained, the author tags on, this is what the ancients were commended for. Faith is confidence. How the ancients did it is how I should do it because that is what God sees as commendable. 

So how did Abraham do? There is a lot in this chapter so I break it down. I reflect on how Abraham accepted the invitation from God first. Actually, it wasn’t an invitation, it was a command, and that is how I have experienced each of my transitions as well. I knew I had to go.  So… By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. Okay, so that’s pretty clear. He trusted God. He obeyed. He went. I remember thinking before leaving one situation, I’m going in the faith of Abraham. But I really wasn’t. I could visit the place I was going to. I could see the geography, the stores, the homes, the recreation, etc. Abraham went even though he did not know where he was going. Would I have been more eager to go if I didn’t know where I was going?

Let’s carry on. What else does God reveal about Abraham’s move? By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. He made a home for himself and his family, while being a stranger in a foreign land. He could do that because he had his eyes on the future. I’m so thankful that line was included. I remember our first big move, feeling in the smallest sense of the word, like an immigrant. All was foreign. I had to build trust, navigate the culture, understand the assumptions and create relationships while feeling unknown everywhere I went.  But, like Abraham, I made a home. Our family found a church, made new friends, and fell in love with the local library as well as the cashiers at the grocery store. 

That was a move to a new location. I was okay through that. I can resonate with Abraham on that front. It is returning to where I came from that I needed to hear more from God. Others often assumed that the move would be my return to ‘Eden,’ my first and most beautiful home. Personally, I didn’t know what to assume or what to hope for. I loved where I lived and unlike the other moves, the excitement of the unknown and the curiosity of what God had planned for our family was absent. My head knew it would be okay, but my heart felt like a young adult leaving for university. The softest part of me hoped I could come back for special occasions and forever in a few years. 

But God. He provided a word through this same chapter in the Bible. All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.  If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Where Moses and the Israelites left Egypt with confidence because of the sign of the blood of the lamb on the doorpost, I had to enter a new life, new situations, and without assumptions with the confidence of the hope promised through the blood of the lamb on the cross. I will not settle in ‘Eden’ or return to where I left. I will live fully today where I am with grief but not without hope of a better home, a heavenly, eternal one prepared for me that will be without grief. I’m at home restless; settled, longing to receive the things promised in the best city prepared for me by God.