THE LONG GOODBYE

Moving isn’t for wimps!  Since coming back from a week in Florida in May, Jim and I have been busy cleaning out and cleaning up after living for 31 years in the same house.  

Back in 1984 when we bought the house, we loved the fact that it had tons of storage and closet space.  I wouldn’t say we love it now.  For all these years, instead of throwing things out, we just stored it in the attic, or the rec room, or the garage, or the mud room.  Hence, it has taken us more than four weeks to go through it all and purge our STUFF (I would use a more colorful word that begins with a c, but I won’t).

Then there is the cleaning. I have never been a Mrs. Clean kind of woman.  I had a neighbor in our previous house who washed down her walls twice a year.  Yeah, that’s NOT me!  My motto has always been, “if it looks neat, it doesn’t have to be spotless”.  

I’m not a neatnik, but I’m not a slob either, so it came as a very big and unpleasant surprise when moving beds, dressers, and things that don’t get moved much, to discover just how dirty floors, baseboards, etc. can get because things never get moved.  Dust bunnies everywhere!  And then there were all the things we just didn't SEE that we began to look at through a potential buyer's eyes!  Yuck!  Since then we have been cleaning maniacs!  We're are considering buying stock in Magic Erasers!

And then there was the painting.  We hate painting.  After weeks of painting rooms we had neglected for quite a while, we still hate painting, probably more than before, but boy, do those rooms look nice! 

We have finally reached the place where all the workmen have done their jobs, the big painting projects are mostly done, lots of stuff ended up in the trash, even more to a local mission, and some has been given away to friends and family.  We can see the light at the end of the proverbial "getting ready to move" tunnel!  Whoo hoo!

All of us who have lived together for the last five years -Jim and I, our son in law Nathan, daughter Becky and granddaughter Emma - have been planning a move to Florida for a long time, but were waiting for Emma to graduate high school.  Now she has.  

Nathan is already in Florida working.  Becky is finishing up her last day of work today and she and Emma are leaving for Florida for good on Tuesday of next week.  On July 12 Jim and I hope to put the house on the market, and then it’s just a matter of time for us.

For the last week, Becky has been saying her good-byes to co-workers past and present, and to her high school friends.  It has been a very emotional week for her. We have never lived anywhere but New Jersey, so the move to Florida, while filling us with excitement and anticipation, also has its down side.  Goodbyes are part of the package.

I have watched Becky's struggles with her goodbyes, and have been thankful that Jim and I have been too busy, our move still months off in the future, for us to have thought yet about the goodbyes.  But come they will, and I know they won’t be easy.

Both Jim and I have family here in New Jersey, and while we hope they will all visit us in Florida, being so far will probably mean no more Thanksgiving dinners together as extended families, no birthday dinners, or weekends at the shore.  We leave behind some really wonderful neighbors who have made living on this street a blessing, and treasured friends from my English as a Second Language class that it will be hard to leave.  Unless the Lord calls me back, I leave behind my yearly weekend retreat at Tuscarora in Pennsylvania, which has been a source of spiritual blessing and a reunion with sisters in Christ from all over northern New Jersey.  And it will mean leaving behind our beloved Christian family at Montvale Evangelic Free Church and ministries which have been so significant to us both as our way of serving the Lord in our church.

I know the goodbyes are coming, but thankfully, I haven’t had time to process that yet.  When the time comes, I hope I will be able to convey to all those I have come to appreciate, care about, and love, how much knowing them has meant to me, how the Lord has blessed me through them. 

I know there will be many new friends, ministries, neighbors and family gatherings and a new church in Florida that I will love, and I look forward to them.  But the goodbyes will come first and they will not be easy.