When Church Friends Move

On Sunday, we found out that one of our church friend couples is moving.  We knew they'd been downsizing, and at the start of the downsizing process, I thought they just wanted to get rid of the house, now that the market is back up and their children have all graduated from college and gotten rooted in different places.

At first, that was the process.  Somewhere along the way, they decided to relocate to be closer to the grandchild, if all the pieces fell into place.  And all the pieces have fallen into place:  a buyer for the house and a new job elsewhere.

I have dreams of relocating myself.  I always have.  It's my go-to solution for when life disappoints me:  let's sell most of what we own, pack up the rest, and head for a new place!  It's a variation of an old narrative arc of much of the literature I read in my youth, the lighting out for the territories.

As we drove home from church on Sunday, I said to my spouse, "We will likely never see them again after they move."  There's not much that would bring them back here.  I'm guessing that they'll use all their vacation time to see their family members, not to come back to South Florida to see old church friends.  And we're not likely to call them, should we be passing through their new town.

It's strange to think about this.  We've seen these church friends regularly after all, each week in church and during special events and counting the money after church together.  We've worked on special projects and exchanged lots of e-mails.  We've read the same books and talked about them.  We've solved the problems of our individual church together, the mundane stuff like arranging for AC repairs and the more dramatic stuff like following up with police after break ins.  We even went to Synod Assembly together in the same car, which is a special kind of bonding experience.

And now, off they go.

I'm sure we'll keep up with each other, at least at first.  And if we ever ended up in the same church again, I predict we would pick up right where we left off.

I'm sad for me, but happy for them, to be able to be closer to family and to have new experiences.