The First Move

My girlfriends came and helped me load my furniture into a moving van. They didn’t want me to move. At year 2 of 9, I didn’t know yet what I was getting into. But we dug in and did it anyway. Through rain and mud, with the hilarity of a slippery slope – I can still vividly picture the moment my sweet friend went sliding down on her back after her feet went out from under her as we girls tried to carefully make our way down a rain soaked, muddy backyard hill……with a couch. One moment she was hefting the corner of the couch beside me and the next, all I could see was the top of her head, with the rest of her body hidden underneath the couch the rest of us still held. Did we laugh?? Oh, we roared. It only added to the roller coaster experience of the day. And it provided the emotional release we all so desperately needed.  It was actually a fun day overall, and my girls were there for me when I needed them. But none of them wanted the move to happen. They swallowed their advice, trusted I would eventually make a healthy decision and said ‘how can we help?’. Throughout all of the 9 years, my girlfriends were my supporters. Even when it was painful for them to watch me again and again go back to something that they could see would always remain broken. Even when they did not know how much more they could take of the abuse they watched happening. They were always there. We emptied the home I had loved and filled the moving van. After everything was loaded, I pulled away and drove the 30 minutes to meet another set of friends at self storage. These were wonderful friends too. Not only did they help me unload box after box into the storage unit, until we could find a home big enough for all of us to begin living as a blended family, only 2 weeks later these same friends would help me move it all back out again, to move me and the boys back into a home built for three.