Moved

Good morning, world!

6:34am and in ten minutes, I will have been awake for 2 hours already. 

What a crazy last..uhm.. I think maybe a crazy last week, but possibly only a crazy last 5 days. I don't remember at this point. Yesterday was the big day. We moved!!

The big thing about all of this is how incredibly loved I feel by the whole process. I mean,  I hated everything about packing and the stress of having everything exploded everywhere and all that, but in the end, I felt very loved. 

Acts of service is one of my very top love languages and so of course my heart was moved in the deepest places when some of my friends showed up on my door step at 8am and stayed the day to do anything and everything. 

Our last helper outter left around 10pm, I think, but it was glorious. I had been up til 12am the night before, putting the last touches on the packing boxes and then up at 5:30 to get a head start on the day. So, of course by the time 5 or 6 rolled around in the evening, I was a little loopy, I think. It's a little vague to me at this point on account I'm still short on sleep, but everything was extremely funny to me, and of course my wonderful friends kept it going. 

I love that at the end of a long, exhausting, hot day, I can laugh and be as content as ever. I love that the Lord has blessed me with such good friends who would give up all the spare moments in their day to help us girls move and lift and carry things. Honestly, I can't imagine that it would have gone as smoothly had we not had our wonderful man friends hefting the big things. 

It's funny how there have been times in my life where the pain in my heart has cut into the bottomest places and I've wondered if there would be a time when I'd be happy all the way down to my core ever again. I mean, it's easy to be temporary happy, or to be touched on the surface, but there's something about the very core of our beings that we guard and protect from whatever may come at us. We fail miserably, of course, trying to protect that part of our hearts and then we blame God for it. (Why didn't we just trust Him to protect us in the first place?) And then we are broken in the deepest places. And we can trust God and give our lives to Him, but the brokenness can sometimes linger for a long time. 

And then in the stillness of the night when we are left with our own quiet thoughts and deep contemplation  that broken little piece reminds you that you're still broken no matter how much you run from it during the day. 
I think part of letting God heal the deepest places involves surrendering to the ways He loves you and seeing it. I think in a situation like having to move across town on a hot day, operating on very little sleep, and just being totally exhausted can lead to being grumpy or really complainy. 

But, I've come to look for how God loves me in the ways that I know i feel loved and yesterday was filled to the BRIM with lots of little things that added up to a whole big basket of being loved. 

There was someone to lift the heavy seats out of my van at 8am and someone to put them back at 10pm Someone took apart my futon and put it back together at the new place. My dresser, bed and every other heavy object were carried down a flight of stairs and back up a flight of stairs. 
People were holding doors for eachother and everyone kept making the trips, loading, unloading, arranging boxes to not be in the way and affirming each other. 

It made me think of the many work project missions trips I've been on with my church family back home. My very favorite trip I went on was actually when I was in college but went as a youth leader for the freshmans and sophomores. It was filled with sweaty work project after sweaty work project and no showers or coffee. But it was SO fun because everyone worked together, no one complained, and everyone worked hard until is was done and the leaders had run out of things for us to do. I love those trips because I always grow closer to the people I go with because you get to talk to them and get to know them while doing mindless tasks. You get to joke with them and make memories with them and you wouldn't outside of that situation. 

I loved that I felt like that with my friends yesterday. I felt loved by them serving in that way, and I felt loved by how they made me laugh. 

It was 10:20pm when I was finally all washed up and laying down on the mattress I have set up on the floor at my friend's house so as to keep the drive to work in the morning shorter. At that point all I wanted to do was spend a little time with Jesus as I'd felt him love me all day long and I'd hardly stopped to spend a little time with him. I got to read some Psalms. :)

Tomorrow I have the day off and I resolve to spend some quality time with The Lord as I miss him far too much at this point.