A SURPRISING CHANGE OF HEART

If you have been following my blogs then you know that Jim and I are planning a move to Florida, hopefully early next fall.  Due to life circumstances, back when the economy fell a few years ago, our daughter Becky, her husband Nathan, and our now 17 year old granddaughter, Emma, have been living with us.  With the advent of Emma’s last year in high school, the time has come to think seriously about a move.  We’ve already started cleaning out filing cabinets and getting ready for the first of many garage sales.  But a move wasn’t always something I anticipated with happiness.

Jim, God bless him, worked hard for more than 40 years for Deloitte, and saved for retirement.  Florida, that income tax free, low property tax, senior friendly state, has been calling his name since the day he closed the door to his office and never looked back.  While he was imagining his stress free life in that “stretch your retirement dollars as far as they can go” mecca, I was digging in my heels in good old New Jersey soil!  I did not want to go to Florida!

All I could think of were the losses.  I would have to leave the state I have called home since I was a baby.  The celebration of the joys of the changing seasons would be a thing of the past.  My loving, supportive, and much loved church family would be left behind.  We’d have to say good-bye to my brother and Jim’s, all still living here in New Jersey.

And then there was the weather!  I hate hot and humid.  My very own internal flame causes me to break out in a sweat in a sub-zero blizzard in January, how would I ever manage when it was ALWAYS hot and humid?

My daughter, Becky, who LOVES Florida in any season, and who plans to move there herself, would give me pep talks whenever I would give verbal vent to my doubts.  She’d remind me of how much better it would be as I got older never to have to shovel a sidewalk again, or tread lightly on ice.  She would remind me that there were also churches in Florida and we would find one and make it home, as we’d done before right here in New Jersey.  And she’d encourage me that before I knew it, I would be making new friends, teaching in a church, or attending a Bible study, or doing something else I loved here in New Jersey – only in Florida.

I grappled with all of it for a long time without letting go of my resentment.  Until I finally took it to the Lord.  Essentially, I said: “You know, Lord that I don’t especially want to go to Florida, but Jim does.  So, Lord, if this is something You want me to do, You’re going to have to change my heart.”

It didn’t happen overnight, but gradually I began to stop thinking only about me and start thinking about Jim.  It would be hard, I think, to find a more hardworking and faithful man when it comes to preparing for the future.  Jim worked long hours at Deloitte, with a 3 hour a day commute for many of the last years and he saved, and saved.  How could I now refuse to consider a move that would enable those retirement dollars to sustain us for even longer because I just didn’t want to go elsewhere?

When my eyes shifted from ME to Jim, my resentment left, and I began to think differently about a move.  I will still find it hard to leave my church family.  I love serving the Lord with them and worshipping together on Sunday.  They will be greatly missed.

It will be hard leaving family behind and maybe having to find new ways to celebrate family holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I will most definitely miss the change of seasons.  I’m sure that will take a few years to get used to, but I was there once in February when it felt like May here in New Jersey.  I think Februarys that feel like Mays might just be pretty easy to get used to.

Then there is the heat and humidity.  Thank the Lord for air conditioning!  I’m hoping for a lot of help from the Lord for that one!  However, I did see my mom, who originally hated the heat of Florida, adapt.

I thought it was especially funny when today I received an e mail from Becky, who is currently vacationing in Florida.  She and her family also plan to move to Florida next fall.  This time it was SHE who was having doubts about moving to Florida and I giving the pep talk! 

Lord willing, this time next year, all of us will have made the move.  In the meantime, we’ll be savoring all the delights of fall, winter, and spring, alongside all the New Jersians we know and love, right here in our good old home state.