Currently we are packing. I am actually taking a break from trying to pack my oldest teenage daughter's room into as few boxes as possible. Up till now, that's 5 boxes, and I am not finished. I know that she has sorted her stuff and thrown out a lot, but boy.... there's a lot of stuff! I find myself panicking slightly when I think about the rest of the house!
But then again - I am trying to pack down almost 12 years of living in this house. 18 years of marriage. 16 years with kids. And we'll be loading all that into the back of a big truck on June 10th.
We're uprooting our family to move to the isle of Bornholm, the place of my dad's childhood and my husband's as well. We've been called to serve in a freechurch in the town of Nexoe - the home of Danish author Martin Andersen Nexoe (1869-1954) (Nexoe is spelt Nexø in Danish, but as this letter doesn't excist in the English alphabet, we adapt it to "oe").
Bornholm is situated in the Baltic Sea, closer to Sweden than to Denmark, but Danish through and through. Bornholm is a beautiful place with an incredible nature. We've joked about moving there for years, and now it is becoming a reality. I took a chance and quit my job here without having a new one lined up - quite a risk, as there are very few jobs available on Bornholm - but by what I consider to be the grace of God, I was offered a part-time job teaching English at a small private school. I think that is just perfect!
Within 3 weeks, our house was sold, and within 4 weeks, I had a job. Somehow that just makes it seem like the right thing for us to do.
So, as I pack up my house and home, I also try to clean out my head, heart and soul - what can I leave behind? What has proven worthless, or usefull? What lesson have I learned here, that I ought to take with me? Believe me, there are many thoughts.
It's an adventure about to begin. A fairytale of sorts that awaits us in the near future. We get to begin again - a new home (which we stil haven't found), new friends, a new time for our girls and ourselves.
Between this life and that, there's summer - a summer that will find us living in our camper, driving through some of Europe, as we enjoy our family, relax, eat well and sleep late, all the time awaiting our new life on Bornholm.
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| The cliffs on the east side of Bornholm |
