Thunder sounds a warning and the skies deepen their gray hue. A panic-stricken pup becomes my shadow as I walk through the house, boxes in hand. I turn on the ceiling light in the bedroom, then turn it off again. Lamplight always feels more appropriate in the approaching of a storm. I pull things from high closet shelves, things I once decided I wouldn’t need, haphazardly threw up there, hoped didn’t tumble back down. “The Stable Song” plays on repeat – it’s the song I find myself subconsciously humming throughout the day. Fabric and clothes with holes I once promised to repair are stacked neatly into boxes, and decorations are taken off the wall to be packed on top, sealed with a layer of packing tape.

We’re moving.

Just across town, to an inviting house with a front porch and oddly enough a front door the same shade of green we painted ours last summer. A neighborhood with good sidewalks and the promise of many summer night walks and talks with Ridley and Eric and friends who live nearby. It’s a starter house, not a dream house, but a starter house carrying the excitement and anticipation of what the next season of our life will look like as homeowners.

And while I expected the sadness that comes with leaving a home that has been woven through the past three and a half years of your life stories, I didn’t expect this in-between emotion. The sense of walking in the front door and not quite feeling at home, but not sure where to go to feel that way. The evenings of staring at empty bookshelves (never have I ever had a problem with not enough books or having to leave shelves empty) and walls with missing pictures. And maybe it is a blessing, to be allowed to slowly detach from this home, but I feel in-between, and I don’t like it.

I could easily take these sentiments and apply them to spiritual things like how this world is not our home and we were meant for another world and all the things that CS Lewis beautifully describes in some famous quotes. But right now, I think my heart just wants to walk through the process of being in-between yet finding rest here. We still have another two weeks in this house, and the amount of boxes stacked along walls and in the basement will continue to increase each day. Then we will move, and once again I expect to feel in-between for a couple of weeks until we get things unpacked and settled again.

Yet there must be rest in-between.