Moving Boxes of Rocks

Good, bad, or otherwise, I've never been an overly sentimental person. This is not new information to most people who know me, but as my reading audience has expanded, I think it's only fair to start with that. I didn't cry at my wedding (I did throw up, but that's another story), I never understood why people wanted me to go to my senior prom so badly (I didn't, and honestly will never regret it - I married my date, and we've done much cooler things since then), and I didn't even attend my college graduation (it was raining and I didn't feel like driving 35 minutes there). The same is true with physical places. When we graduated high school and my friends sighed and said, "We may never come back here..." I wanted to throw a praise hand up, say hallelujah and get out of there.

But I try to respect the sentimental. I have to, because my mom and sister are very much the sentimental types. I remember when we moved from our first house to the house my parents live at now, I was about 10 and MacKenzie was 7. I didn't know if that girl was going to make it through the move. First, she didn't want to move, which, fine, I get. Then, she wanted to take her rock collection with her. Her massive, extensive, heavy rock collection. And here's the thing about her rock collection... NONE OF THEM WERE EVEN COOL. In our old house, we had large stone landscape in a lot of areas, instead of gravel or mulch, and MacKenzie, the little recluse, would spend hours examining the rocks, and select a few... probably every day... to bring back inside with her. I believe the final compromise was "one small box of rocks" got to come to the new house, which I thought was beyond generous - to load a moving van with a box of rocks.


I might have met my rock collection last night, though. Last night, Nate and I went over to our church's ministry center in Morton to help load stuff up and clean, as our church moves into their first permanent location in Pekin. Prior to now, our church met at the Morton High School, then Morton Cinemas, then Tremont High School... and along the way we acquired our ministry space in the Field Shopping Center in Morton, where the pastors' offices are located and we have a space for meetings, student ministry, and other outreach. I think in a lot of ways, that space has been the site of more spiritual growth for Nate and me than any other area. As I swept the large open room in front, I thought about all of the youth groups we had there - my first message to the students on honoring their bodies, telling them my struggles with depression, Nate's first message on love and acceptance, Nate first expressing his hope to pursue a call to ministry, and talking with students and getting to know them and their struggles and their hearts. I also thought about my grandparents attending church there for the first time for one of our Christmas Eve services. As I moved into Connie's office and started sweeping, I thought about how she had mentored Nate and I there, or even just taken time to laugh with us. And as I vacuumed Dale's office, I thought about how terrified Nate and I were while we sat in there for marriage counseling, and how we came out of the sessions more terrified, but also more empowered and devoted to making a marriage work than ever before. As I cleaned these spaces, I started to get upset. "This place means too much to me to leave!" I thought, for probably one of the first times in my life. I wanted to shout to everyone to bring everything they had moved back into the building... or figure out a way to move the whole building, or something. I wanted to take it ALL with us. I didn't just want to take one small box of rocks.

But at the end of the day, those milestones aren't in the walls or the carpet or the chairs or the desks. Just like MacKenzie eventually realized that her childhood and memories weren't in those rocks. The milestones, the memories, the growth - they're in the people. Those things happened because of God and because of the people who worked to do his work in the world and invest in people who want to do the same. Where we're moving... God will be there. He's already there, working through the same people, through new people, and bringing more people to do his work every day. If I mourned that building, I'd just be mourning a big collection of rocks... and that would just be silly, right MacKenzie?