I suppose it’s safe to say that there is always one of two elements constantly at work in our lives. The element of moving or the element of staying. We get a new job, or want to be closer to family, or just plain old want to enjoy a different environment, so we are suddenly in the status of moving. Even before we are actually, physically moving we spend the time leading up to it acting as if we are.

Some friends of ours will not be actually leaving their current home and taking up another in Florida until the summer, which is many months from now, but they still say, “We are moving.” And it would be the truth. We fill boxes for moving and then we actually go and when everything is unloaded from the truck it all suddenly transforms into boxes for staying. Suddenly, even though we don’t know anybody, even though we will have to Google maps where the grocery store is for the first couple times, we are staying. We don’t know the ins and outs of our new house yet, but it has become our home, and we are staying.

Boxes for moving become boxes for staying. It’s kind of a little bit like poetry. I guess you could even say that it is poetry; the poetry of life. We start packing the boxes for moving, putting the kids toys in them and our shoes and then there is the gratuitous miscellaneous box at the end that starts getting crowded with a bunch of random crap, because no matter how determined we are to maintain a system there still wind up being stray items at the end.

When we finally get unpacked all those boxes for moving become readily available as boxes for staying. The sport equipment gets packed up in them and gets put on a shelf in the garage, labeled with a black sharpie and you can call yourself organized. Another one with the summer pool toys, and another one with gardening supplies, and you have a system that you can really be proud of. How about winter clothes and summer clothes? You put them in their boxes and rotate them in and out of the attic pertaining to the season and your whole closet space opens up like never before.

What about you… Where are you right now? Are you moving, or are you staying?