"To leave one's country to go
and live in another country
in inferior conditions,
that is, without a safety net
and without recourse of return
to one's native land,
this seems to me to be last great human adventure."
Dany Laferrière, A Drifting Year
I write from a place of privilege.
Moving from one rich country to another, with education, passports, and family on both sides of the Atlantic makes our family a blessed and privileged kind of immigrant family. I don't know the want, terror, fears of millions of immigrants around the globe who get to a new country with no connections, no money, perhaps no education or no way to have their training acknowledged in the new land.
But still.
These past two days, as we have ticked off a few more big milestones and head into the last busy stretch of moving-packing-sorting, I feel the no safety net feelings.
I came this way a decade ago. And it was hard.
I return to my native land x 4. Blessed. No longer one, but "many."
I've got old friends and contacts in our new city, family an 8-10 hour drive away.
But still. In many ways, Canada is new to me again.
It is definitely new to my husband and children, and though we are excited, there are moments of hesitation, too. We have again tasted His faithfulness these past two months, we have a job and scholarship and provision that could be called miraculous. Thankful. Thankful. Thankful.
But still.
New everything awaits.
The night before I leave on any kind of trip, I never want to go. It goes back to the night before my much beloved one week of summer camp, which I'd saved for and looked forward to all year. I threw up in the bathroom and told my mom I didn't want to go.
I love traveling, I love the new, I get bored easily.
But still.
Something in us longs for comfort, the known, to be known.
As we sort through belongings with our 3 year old, we talk about what to take, what is important to us. Despite my desire to de-clutter, I value the important memories, the best toys, a few security objects. Journals, photo albums, a few beloved books. There is something very unnerving about giving away all of the furniture you have slowly cobbled together to make a household since you showed up with a suitcase a decade ago. Since we were both students in a 60 square meter, 1 bedroom apartment.
They are just things.
We are blessed to be able to bring a few things, but we hold tighter to each other.
And we won't pretend it isn't hard.
We'll probably shed tears, and hold friends close, and part of us will wish we could stay.
We'll let ourselves mourn this season, even as we rejoice in the next.
the last great human adventure.
