Reordering

My life in boxes, before the reordering began in earnest.

After years of feeling defeated at every turn, this past week has been a victory. Or maybe the start of one.

A week ago, I moved into the house my wife and I will occupy for the foreseeable future—a modest brick home in rural Kentucky, owned by the camp where I now serve as director. Just emptying the truck felt like an accomplishment, but going through the boxes has been at times a joyful experience. We’ve had most of our belongings in storage for nearly a year, which is long enough to forget about things you once took for granted. Rediscovering a lost piece of tupperware is enough to make me a little giddy.

The struggle is not a matter of content, but volume. I’ve piled boxes into their appropriate rooms, but there’s no way to unpack them all at once. I’ve had to ask myself what is most necessary for me to live well in this new space. I’ve had to figure out a way to sequence the reordering of my life so that I can be as functional a human as possible through the rest of the process.

Some decisions were easy. Our bedroom needed a fresh coat of paint, and I needed a place to sleep, which made it the clear Day 1 project. it would be nice to have the bathroom in order, but since I can only locate one towel, hooking up the washer took priority. The kitchen was the biggest project, but also the most critical, unless I wanted to subsist on ham sandwiches and Ted Lasso-esque scoops of peanut butter.

The bedroom was the place to start.

Today, I decided to paint and organize my office, which will double as Zachary’s bedroom when he is home from college. I shoved his boxes in a closet and set up my desk. It isn’t the most comfortable space—that will be the living room, which is currently the storehouse for undesignated boxes—but it’s a necessary piece of my own sense of humanity. I will sleep better knowing I have a space to write. It’s the only way I know to make sense of…well, anything.

As I work, though, I can’t help but think of how strange it all seems. Two years ago, I would not have chosen a new job in a new state, certainly not one that required me to live a thousand miles from my family for several months. I miss them, and I miss what friends I could claim in South Dakota. But then I remind myself that the separation is temporary, the miles bridgeable, the work environment supportive and courageous in ways I haven’t experienced in a very long time. This is a good place, and it will feel like home soon enough.

I understand why people say they hate moving. I’m going to be living in chaos for some time yet, and that’s only considering the inside of the house. The yard is another project entirely.

But the outside can wait for warmer weather and longer days. For now, it’s enough to unpack and rediscover and filter through. The life I emerge with will not be the same as my former one, but it will perhaps rhyme with what came before. The old was dismantled with tremendous grief, but also tremendous care. Reordering it is not simply a chore. It’s an opportunity. Maybe even a gift.