Surrendering to Stillness
“Be still.”
Words whispered last summer.
I heard them after conversations concluded moving back “home” to Arizona wasn’t what we thought it would be. The desert felt drier than ever for two people who grew up here.
An attack on character and creativity cut so deep that old wounds broke open. Raw and exposed. They unraveled the healing made in a counselor’s office on previous pages of life.
There was a shift, and I found myself questioning relationships and reality.
Nothing was keeping us here. Brent could work from anywhere. What if we looked at a map and chose somewhere with things we loved about all the places we’d passed through over the last decade?
We named our wants: a bigger airport, easier travel, more opportunities for his business and my writing, greenery, trees, closer lakes, and more for our family to do.
We fell hard for Franklin, TN, and dreamt of a new legacy and replacing a homebase that felt tainted.
“Be still.”
We tried to table the idea for three months, but patience isn’t a spiritual gift of mine. My efforts were lacking; I continued to check Zillow most days and purge closets just in case.
Seasons changed, but our feelings didn’t. We visited the area last winter. It was everything we knew it would be, and we drove through the rolling hills of Tennessee with a newfound hope for our family’s future.
We wanted to list our house for sale at the beginning of the year but needed to wait until we filed this year’s taxes. We spent the last several months waiting for a green light.
It came a couple of weeks ago.
Tears of joy turned to tension. Brent’s business has grown so much over the last six months that we wondered how we would make a move work.
We could wait until he hired more employees, but we wouldn’t want to move Catcher his junior or senior year. We spent a week rehashing a decision we thought we had already made.
Disappointed and discouraged but at peace, we decided Arizona was home for now.
I’m trying to find my footing after having one foot out the door for nine months.
“Be still. Be here.”
What does it look like to be present in a place you began to believe God brought you back to for closure?
Some thought military life stirred this desire for change. I don’t know; years of longing for the latter can leave one indecisive. The lines between complacency and contentment become blurred.
“Be still. Be here. Be you.”
Being you feels complicated when sometimes it seems God is the only one who gets you.
I’ve always thought the sun shines differently in Arizona. Maybe I can, too—raw, exposed, tumbleweeds and all.
We think stillness is about movement, but it’s more about surrender. Surrendering wounds, plans, and dreams.
Perhaps in our restlessness, we find a sanctifying stillness that satisfies more than what we thought we wanted.
