HEELCATCHER

Our new life has begun in Louisiana…but it still doesn’t quite feel like home.

After three days of travel and 1400 miles, we arrived in Baton Rouge two and a half weeks ago. Actually my wife and I arrived. The kids stayed with grandparents in Alabama for a few days to give us a chance to get the house in a somewhat livable condition.

The Louisiana Welcoming Committee

We hit the ground running…scraping, painting, cleaning, repairing, rearranging and killing roaches. Yes, two nice big ugly roaches greeted us in the bathtub of our new home as if to say, “Welcome back to Louisiana, Yankee boy.” I quickly squashed and disposed of them only to find two more the next morning. After killing them, another one greeted us several hours later in the same bathtub. Hmmm…

Later, my wife called out from the bathroom, “Steve, get in here quickly!” When I arrived, she pointed to the overflow drain in the bathtub. “That’s where they are coming from!” Sure enough, two curious roach heads were popping out of the overflow drain with antennae moving back and forth trying to detect if the tub was worth diving into or not.

A recent trip to Walmart had me prepared for the battle. With a fresh can of Raid in my hand, I started spraying at the overflow drain. The roaches fell into the tub and scurried around…progressively convulsing as the Raid began to take effect. After they expired in the tub, legs up, antennae still twitching, I aimed the Raid nozzle up the overflow drain and began spraying. More roaches began to fall into the tub and commence the convulsive dance. To be merciful, I coated them with more Raid to quicken the death process.

After several minutes, I sat on the toilet seat and rested from my intense battle with Louisiana wildlife. About fifteen roaches lay belly up in my bathtub. I ran water in the tub to move them all into one big brown pile of antennae and hairy legs. Then I found a big plastic cup and scooped them out of the tub and into the trashcan.

The next day my call to the local exterminator moved from #9 on the list to #1.

It’s funny. Roaches are no real danger to humans. They have no sting or venom. Their only real “weapon” is their sheer ugliness. But, oh, their ugliness is effective. I definitely knew that I did not want to be in the shower with a bunch of roaches pouring out of the overflow drain. Sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock movie that I don’t want to see…much less be a part of.

The next few days were hectic. The moving van arrived and the house was flooded with boxes and furniture. Then construction began as we sought to reconfigure a laundry room, pantry, bathroom area. A fine coating of white sheetrock dust covered everything in the house. Meanwhile, outside, the temperature and the humidity rose into the high 80’s each day. Ahhh…..welcome to the bayou.

Things are better now. We are settling in. Most of the boxes have been emptied. The sheetrock dust vacuumed up.  Neighbors have introduced themselves. Kids in the neighborhood have invaded our house almost every day. The south is certainly different in that regard. We have had more visitors at our front door in two weeks than we had in ten years in NJ. Life is friendlier here.

But I am still not at home. It still feels strange.

Time will help. In a few months/years, this will be the new “norm.” Routines will be established. Roads will be memorized. Relationships will become familiarized. Baton Rouge will feel more like home. I may even become a rabid LSU fan.

But more and more in life I am realizing that this earth will never satisfy. It will never feel like “home.” No matter where you live, life changes. Time marches forward. And you can’t hold onto anything. Nor can you give in to the illusion that the next new thing or the next big move will bring ultimate contentment.

C.S. Lewis talked about that too. He said, “If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

That longing for something more…that hunger for something that lasts…that desire for relationships that never end…is our thirst for heaven, for God’s presence, for eternal, unchanging, unquenchable joy. And earth can’t quench that kind of thirst.

You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand. (Psalm 16:11)

And on top of that, heaven doesn’t have roaches.

Our move to Baton Rouge is getting closer. We leave in one week. This is my last Sunday at Sayre Woods.

I knew that moving would be difficult. Selling a house, buying a house, packing up, throwing out, closing accounts, opening accounts, dealing with lawyers, mortgage companies, realtors, insurance underwriters, and township officials. Every day seems to have brought a new hurdle or obstacle to overcome.

But with all the stress of moving, the biggest difficulty has been saying good-bye.

It feels like a kind of death. You know you will see people again but the relationships will change. The daily interaction will end. Yes, there is now Facebook, email, Skype, cell phones, and a host of other things to make the distance seem less far. But there really is no substitute for personal, face-to-face interaction and the shared life of a common location.

I have moved before…from Florida to Alabama, Alabama to Louisiana, Louisiana to Texas, Texas back to Louisiana, Louisiana to New Jersey…and now back to Louisiana. It is the “now back” part that seems harder than the others.

Having a family changes the moving experience. When I was alone or when my wife and I were newly married, every move seemed like a new adventure. We were mobile. Our peers were mobile. Life was constantly in flux. But with a family…and a little more aging, things change. The roots grow deeper. You become more settled, more stable, more intertwined with relationships. Leaving hurts more.

Someone told me recently, “If leaving were easy, then you would know that your relationships were weak. When leaving is hard, you know that your relationships are strong.” It is a shame that oftentimes we don’t know how strong our relationships are until we say good-bye.

After St. Augustine lost some of his closest relationships and struggled with the grief, he commented that nothing in this world lasts, thus we shouldn’t grow too attached to anything…even people. C.S. Lewis, 1500 years later, would vehemently disagree with Augustine. Lewis’ quote is one of my favorites:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven you can be perfectly safe from all dangers and perturbations of love is hell.

Saying good-bye is never easy…but as Christians we hold onto the hope that saying good-bye is never forever. One day the reunion will last for eternity…without the threat of death, the selfishness of sin, or the ache of separation. That is the beauty of heaven.