I’ve never been homeless before.  It’s unexpectedly unsettling.  I’ve rented my own place for two decades in four states, and though I’ve traveled abroad for weeks or months at a time, my white wicker loveseat was always waiting for me with our writing routines.

I sold the patio furniture to a couple down the road last month.  It was time to let it go.

It wouldn’t have fit in my 10×15 storage unit in Hampton Roads, anyway – certainly not with the floor-to-ceiling Tetris-style plan I had for storing what was left of my three-bedroom house, classroom, and shed space for the next six months. 

In fifteen years of renting, I accumulated a lot of, well, everything a house requires.  Drills and bits and screws of all kinds.  And lawncare gear – expensive, oddly-shaped, unique-purposed tools.  And kitchen gadgets that beg my attendance on a closet hoarder reality show: beloved English teacher lives alone but still requires eighteen different cake and pie pans?

It’s time to let go of a lot of things, now.  Not just physical possessions, though I parted with more than I could have imagined.  That was due, in part, to Omari.  I could pack up boxes to throw away, recycle, or give away, and he could take them where they needed to go.  We made four trips to the county dump; I had forty fewer boxes to move than a year ago. 

Last week, I had a living arrangement lined up in Hampton.  Omari told me it was best to pack light since I didn’t know exactly what was coming, and he couldn’t have been more right. As I carefully wrapped and taped the possessions I’ve acquired throughout my life worth keeping, I touched hundreds of sentimental treasures, each reminding me of people God gifted to me when He made me a steward of them, also His grace to me. 

I was still in Pickens when I found out the room I was to rent long-term fell through.  It had been an ideal setup for Tito and me, a place that really felt like home, and it wasn’t until Thursday night after the moving truck was full and the house was empty that it hit me: I didn’t have a home anymore.

We’ve got a place to stay through August, and my friends Mama Sue and Marci would probably say that’s about right when you’re choosing to live on faith.  Just when I’d gotten comfortable in the safety of seeing immediate needs met to free me to suit up in writer’s life fulltime, a door closed that made me question: had I, perhaps, lost God’s favor?

No, it’s just a redirect.  Maybe I lunged headlong for the safest, most secure living option.  I’ve got enough time to figure out what comes next.  I’d worried long enough, all those thoughts spiraling in my head.  What if I prayed instead of worrying?  What if I believed for the say so to come?  In that bedroom for the last time, just Tito and a mattress, I directed my petitions and woes to God. 

I don’t know that I was expecting an answer.  None came.  I fell asleep.

Friday and Saturday were a blur, checking out with my landlord, driving back to Virginia, and unloading the moving truck into my storage unit.  I hired Eddie and Kyeran to help Omari and me, and I told them I’d pay them extra if I never had to hear, “It won’t all fit,” extra if they made it all fit, and extra if they left me access to stuff I might need.  It was a long day.  They earned every president.  Monarch Movers knows what makes the customer happy is best.

Rob invited me and Tito to spend the weekend at a resort in Williamsburg for the weekend, and since we were on the move anyway, we made a pitstop and tried to slow down.  I’d let Pickens go, let most of my stuff go for six months, and I was coming untethered. 

Rob’s goal was getting me to relax.  Omari and I had survived on frozen pizzas while packing, so dinner out was a great start to participating in real life.  After, we took my ukulele down to the pool area, and Rob chatted with folks in the hot tub while I wandered about the property, practicing songs as I walked. 

The sun set as I played.  I was there, in that moment. An older couple stopped to sing along, “Your faith was strong, but you needed proof.  You saw her bathing on the roof.  Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew ya.”  We talked about the allusions in the song, and the man knew how the chords played match the lyrics in the first verse.

When I stowed Summer Sarah in her new tropical uke case and returned to the hot tub, Rob was talking to a Hispanic woman named Myrna.  I slipped in beside her, feeling the heat bubble inside me as it did around me, instantly flushed.  We traversed a dozen topics in as many minutes, fast friends, speaking as much Spanish as English.

I didn’t even notice Rob get out to cool off.  I don’t know how long Myrna and I spoke.  Time stopped.  I was there, in that moment, too.  The conversation turned when she asked about my desire to have children.  I’d prayed for a family, then prayed to lose the desire to be a mom, then maybe I stopped asking.  I tried to make light of it, joking that my ovaries were in a hurry to find a husband to make a kid before their eggs expire.  She laughed, then sobered instantly.

Myrna affirmed me with a barrage of intermixed verses I’ve fingered most fervently in times of trial in years past.  She took my hands in that hot tub in Williamsburg and prayed for me. She said I hadn’t lost God’s favor, that He would not abandon me and others would, and that the Lord would open new doors for me.  I remembered a similar promise from a street preacher in Baton Rouge ten years ago when I left Nashville.

And quite suddenly, I was awake.  God reached through time and space and hugged me through a woman from Maryland I’ll likely never see again.  I am eternally grateful for answered prayer that’s audible, and therefore, hard to miss. 

I’ve never been homeless before.  It’s unexpectedly unsettling, but it’s equally restorative.  The less you have, the less you need… and the more keenly aware you are of the One providing all things in the first place.  It rights your perspective.  

In my thirties, I wrote my way to the future on a white wicker love seat.  Where will my forties write?  Only God knows, and that’s peace enough to sleep soundly tonight.