I Move Every Year

Five places in six years.

And in every one of them you have said some version of the same thing: there is no point starting anything here.

It is a reasonable position and I want to give it its due before taking it apart. Things in the ground stay in the ground. A person who plants a hedge and moves in eighteen months has given a hedge to a stranger. Nobody wants to spend two years building something and then hand over the keys.

So the rule you have arrived at is: nothing I cannot carry.

And it sounds like sense. It sounds like a woman being realistic about her life.

You are not living provisionally, and a life spent between places has never once been a life waiting to start.

But look at what the rule has actually been doing, because it has grown well past its original job.

Nothing I cannot carry was supposed to be a rule about hedges. It has become a rule about everything. It has quietly stopped you buying a pot, because a pot is a thing to move, and filling a windowsill, because that is four things to move, and it has been running for six years and has never once been reviewed.

A rule made for one situation is now deciding all of them.

He sojourned in the land of promise

There is a line in Hebrews about Abraham that has a strange detail in it, and the detail is the point.

By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. (Hebrews 11:9, King James Version)

He sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country.

Now, hold those two halves together, because they do not sit comfortably. The land of promise. The place he had been given, the destination, the whole point of the journey.

And he lived in it as in a strange country. In tents.

You are looking at a man living provisionally in the very place he had been promised, and a tent has never once meant somebody was in the wrong location. Hebrews 11:9 puts the tabernacles inside the land of promise, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that contradiction land on a woman in her fifth kitchen in six years.

And notice that the verse calls it faith. By faith he sojourned.

Not by faith he eventually built. The tent-dwelling itself is the thing being credited. The provisional arrangement is the faith, rather than something to be endured until the real living began.

You are in an arrangement that Scripture has never once treated as the waiting room, and living out of boxes has never been described there as a life on hold. The Holy Spirit is the one who credits a provisional life as faith, and the written word calls the tent-dwelling itself the act of belief.

And the last part of that verse is worth having. With Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.

Three generations in tents. This was not a short stretch. Abraham did not eventually move into a house. Neither did his son. Neither did his grandson.

You are not obliged to reach a settled version before anything counts, and three generations in tents has never once been read as a family that failed to arrive. The Spirit of God is the one who was with all three of them in the same arrangement, and the word names the son and the grandson in the same tents.

What actually survives a move

Let me be practical, because the rule has been operating on a false assumption and correcting it opens a lot up.

Pots move. That is the whole thing.

A person with twelve pots on a balcony who moves has twelve pots and a car with two trips in it. Nothing is lost. The plants do not know they have gone anywhere, and in three days they have settled and are exactly what they were.

That is not a compromise version of gardening. That is a garden with wheels under it.

You are able to own a garden that travels, and a container has never once been the temporary version of a real plant. The Holy Spirit is the one who deals in what actually moves, and Hebrews 11:9 puts the whole of a promise inside a set of tents.

And here is the thing that six years of the rule have cost, and it is the real loss.

Not the plants. The continuity.

Because a woman who has grown nothing in five places arrives at the sixth with nothing, and starts again, and has done that five times. But a woman who has been growing things in pots for six years arrives at the sixth place with six years of it, and the same plants, and the kitchen looks like hers within a day.

The pots are the thread. They are the one thing that could have carried across all five and instead nothing did.

You are able to have something that runs through all of it, and a set of pots has never once failed to arrive at the next address. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a thing that goes along, and the written word has the same tents pitched by three generations in a row.

Something that outlasts the next move

So here is the assignment, and the wording is chosen precisely.

Plant one thing that will outlast the next move, in a pot you can carry.

Not something quick. Not an annual that finishes in one season and neatly avoids the question. Something that will still be alive in two years and will therefore have to come with you.

You are able to choose a thing on purpose that assumes it will still be here later, and one pot chosen that way has never once been an act of pretending about anything. Hebrews 11:9 has a man dwelling in tents by faith rather than by resignation, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen while a woman picks something that lasts.

And a pot you can carry. That is the constraint and it is a real one and it is easily met. Something you can pick up with two hands and put in the back of a car.

Those two things together are the whole design: it survives, and it travels.

Because the rule was never wrong about the moving. It was only wrong about what the moving rules out, and it turns out the moving rules out almost nothing.

You are able to keep the true half of your own rule and drop the rest, and a sensible constraint has never once needed to become a rule about everything. The Holy Spirit is the one who narrows a thing back to what it was for, and the word puts three generations in tents without any of them treating it as a delay.

And when you move, that pot goes in the car with you rather than in the truck. First box out, first box in.