Standing on the front deck of our bay house, I was captivated by the view of sunrise over the water once again. Pretty much every morning my husband and I have been here the dogs have woken me up earlier than I wanted for their morning potty break and breakfast. But secretly? I have loved the early start because I’ve gotten to watch the sun coming up over the various and changing colors of Texas’s Matagorda Bay.
On this particular morning I looked and my heart ached. It wasn’t the last time I’d see it, but I knew we were on a countdown. This precious view of day breaking over God’s creation would not be mine forever. The beauty and serenity that has marked every weekend spent here—far from people, busyness, work, church, life, and traffic—one day would all be a collection of memories in my heart and photos that show up on my Facebook feed.
I struggled to believe God was asking us to give this place up. To pack up and move. What would we do without this retreat and safe space to withdraw and rest from the mania of life?
Yet, I felt God tenderly say, “This is not the only beautiful place to watch my sun rise.”
This special place has been a beautiful retreat from many various and difficult things we’ve faced over the past decade. And it has been a gift God has given us to be in and witness His Creation. The reminder of God’s words was that there will be other places to see the sun come up over the water. There will be other places of beauty and rest that God will provide when and where we need it.
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While that moment was a few months ago now, the reality of our move is beginning to hit in bigger ways. Some are practical: working out how to move two dogs internationally, what I need to do to get visa applications started, and how on earth we organize getting our belongings packed and shipped across an ocean.
But some of the realities that have been hitting are more personal: the friends that we will be leaving behind. The family. The parks we’ve frequented where the dogs can roam and play. Our favorite places to eat, some of which hold memories from when we were first engaged. I will need to say goodbye to our home, which we laboriously renovated and restored, as well as the garden I cultivated in the backyard, now full of bee and butterfly-friendly plants. Sometimes I wonder about who will own the place next, and I feel another little ache that I’ll have no control over what they’ll do with the place, whether they’ll appreciate the love and care that went into making an old rental house into a much-loved home.
Saying goodbye is going to be hard. There is so much goodness in our lives today—why on earth are we leaving it behind?
The truth my husband and I live by is that the safest place to be is in God’s will.
And we believe He is calling us onward. As a friend said to me the other day, “When the grace God has given to be where you are goes—that is the point at which staying becomes disobedience.”
It seems that this is that time. So no matter how good the gifts God has given us today, we can let them go. We can make sacrifices, and let’s be honest and real: we do so knowing that we’re are making sacrifices out of abundance. We have been given so much more than most people will ever experience. God is the giver of good gifts (Matthew 7:11, James 1:17), and He will provide for our needs tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next.
It will be hard and undoubtedly tearful as we say goodbye to people we love and places that have fed our souls. But it is only in letting go that we can move on to the next thing and be free to embrace the goodness of the next God-given adventure. That is the next chapter, and that is the safest place to be!
Suse McBay is an ordained Anglican priest and a biblical scholar who specializes in second Temple Judaism. She currently gets to enjoy wearing both hats serving as a tutorial fellow at Wycliffe Hall, a seminary at the University of Oxford. Suse enjoys rock climbing, gardening, occasional bursts of DIY, and life with her husband, Stephen, and their two goofy dogs. You can find out more about her at susemcbay.com.
