Packing Up the House: Courage for the Moves We Did Not Choose

The boxes came from the supermarket, the ones that used to hold tins of mackerel and bottles of oil. You fold them into shape at the kitchen table and begin to fill them. Plates wrapped in newspaper. The children’s school photos from the wall of the passage. The Bible with your mother’s handwriting in the front. You did not want to be doing this. But the lease is up and the landlord is selling, or the job has gone and the mortgage cannot be paid, or the marriage has ended, or Daddy has died and the family house has to be cleared.

Not every move is a happy one. Some of the hardest seasons of family life begin with packing up a house we would rather have stayed in.

A command given at a hard moment

The book of Joshua opens with a death. “Moses My servant is dead,” God tells Joshua (Joshua 1:2). The man who had led Israel for forty years was gone, and Joshua was to take the people across the Jordan into a land they had never lived in. It was a move nobody could avoid and nobody quite felt ready for.

Into that moment God speaks: “Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9, NKJV).

It is worth noticing what the promise is. Not that the move will be easy. Not that the new place will be better than the old. The promise is presence: wherever you go. The God who was with Moses in the wilderness would be with Joshua across the river. The address would change. The companionship would not.

Grief in cardboard boxes

It is all right to grieve a house. Walls hold memories: the corner where the Christmas tree always stood, the door frame with the children’s heights pencilled on it, the verandah where you sat with your husband before he got sick. Leaving can feel like losing a piece of your own history.

Some practical things can help a household through it:

• Take photographs of each room before it is emptied. You may not look at them for years, but you will be glad to have them.
• Keep a few meaningful things, not everything. A plant cutting from the yard, a tile, the old key.
• Say goodbye properly. Some families pray in each room before they leave, thanking God for what happened there.
• Let children talk. They may feel the loss more than they can say. Give them room to be sad.
• Get practical help. If the move involves legal or financial pressure, speak early to your lender, landlord or an attorney-at-law about your options and rights.

Wherever you go

The phrase “wherever you go” covers more ground than we might think. It covers the smaller flat after downsizing. The spare room at your sister’s house while you get back on your feet. The rented place in a town where you know nobody. The care home, if that is where life leads. It even covers the long drive away from a house that was the scene of hurt, if you are leaving somewhere that was not safe.

If you are moving because home has become a place of danger, please do not face it alone. Reach out to people you trust, and to the police or local support services if you are at risk. Courage sometimes looks like leaving, and God goes with you in that too.

Unpacking on the other side

At some point the boxes will be opened in a new kitchen. The plates will go on unfamiliar shelves. The school photos will go on a different wall. It may take a long time before the new place feels like home, and that is normal.

But the same promise that went into the boxes comes out of them. The God who was with you in the old house is already in the new one. Joshua crossed the Jordan not knowing what lay ahead, only knowing who went with him. That is often all we get to know too. It is enough.

For reflection

• What am I grieving about a home I have had to leave, or may soon leave?
• Where do I most need to hear “the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” today?

A prayer: Lord, I did not choose this move, and part of me does not want to go. Thank You for every good thing that happened in this house. Give me courage for the road, and let me find You already waiting in the place I am going. Amen.

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