Move Mode: the Start-Stop of the Already and the Not Yet

The military is an interesting kind of start-stop life, where the starts overlap with the stops in some sort of never ending Venn diagram of constant transition.

This week, the Man is checking out our next duty station as he gets the opportunity to shadow the person currently doing the job he will be doing. The kids and I are continuing to truck along cheerfully—showing up at co-op, juggling soccer schedules, chipping our front teeth (oh, wait, that was just Twinkle)—so you would think that the Man being gone wouldn’t have that huge of an effect on us. Or maybe it was just me thinking that.

I mean, obviously, we miss him. It’s more fun having him around. We’re sending lots of emoji swamped text messages back and forth these days, and he’s started to ask if I’m actually reading his text messages or if they’re all being intercepted by the Horde. The usual when he’s gone on these trips… And that’s what I expected. A usual TDY.

I first got the notion that this wasn’t the usual TDY when the kids accused me of starting the pre-move fridge clean out when I served up two different dinners that had been pulled out of the freezer. In my defense, I’d anticipated the week we were heading into (in a word: swamped) and had meal planned in accordance with the amount of dinner-prep time I was expecting to have and the amount of energy I had a feeling I’d be missing. But the kids weren’t wrong.

Somehow, I had clicked into move mode.

I realized this when I started a list in the back of my bullet journal for goodbye gifts/notes.

You can’t hide from that kind of intensely irrational organization.

And it may not have been the TDY that triggered it. It could’ve been the fact that my Saturday morning long run buddy deployed on Tuesday, and we won’t be here by the time she gets back.

It could’ve been that we only have two weeks left at our co-op and Twinkle has already finished two of her school books for the year.

Or it could’ve been the fact that this week we hit the three-month mark until the Man officially hands over his work phone and exits squadron command for the third and final time. (Do I believe in the jinx?)

Three months sounds like a long time, but at the rate my days are disappearing, I am firmly of the opinion that I will wake up one morning and the movers will be pulling up in front of the house. And I’m not wrong.

This is the thing with all these overlaps. Start-stop. Start-stop. The goodbyes come without warning. We think they’ll all be clumped together at the end but before we know it, a friend is running by the house to hug us before she heads out of the country. Before we know it, the pre-move survey is scheduled. Before we know it, we’re counting the lasts.

The last time we’ll see the cherry tree bloom in our front yard. The last time we’ll go to physical therapy. The last time we’ll run a base 5k.

We want to be present. We don’t want to waste the time we have here. The friends we are leaving have had a huge impact on our lives. We’re going to miss them. But…

…Plans have to be made for the next place. Co-ops need to be located. Churches. Sports teams. Orthodontists. Dermatologists. All the -ists. Vets. Libraries. The list goes on. The rental lease has to be read through (and not skimmed). The house has to be purged and, at some point, deep cleaned. And the To Do lists multiply like rabbits.

We get asked if we’re excited about the next place, and we don’t know how to answer. We learn to be okay with getting excited only after we’ve driven away with the U-Haul trailer and the kids and the pets, and only after the last base—the one we learned to love, the one that helped shape us in unexpected ways, the one we weren’t super excited about two years before—is in our rearview mirror.

Move mode will click in at some point whether we like it or not. Whether we’re talking about it or not. And whether we let it call the shots…or not.

We are still here. And things need doing. Both here and at the next base. As we get ready to head to our ninth (or tenth, depending on how you’re counting) base, I’m learning in new ways that a good chunk of getting better at moving is learning how to sit in the sweet spot between here and gone, the already and the not yet. To be present while still preparing for what’s next is more important than how quickly I can get the boxes unpacked at the next place or how well fill out the paperwork or whether or not my ducks are in the row.

Start-stop. Start-stop. We purpose to be here while we get ready for there.

Huh. This sounds kind of familiar.

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3:2 {italics mine}

Already, but not yet. Present, but looking ahead. Maybe there are far more of us in persistent move mode than just our military families after all.

Start-stop. And I remember that Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

Start-stop. He goes before us and He comes behind.

Start-stop. He is the Yes and the Let It Be So.

Which means I’ll start chipping away at the pantry and I’ll make my lists and I’ll have all the planning/praying conversations with the Man…and I’ll also enjoy the people and the places and the memories that are being made right now.

And I’ll let the tension between the two take me back to Jesus.