moving

I finally made a decision, you'll be happy to know. Well, maybe you didn't know I was facing one, but I was.
I really wanted to move into the city, to be closer to my friends and family there, to live in community with them. Before this last few months, I was unable to give anything to them, only to take from. And I wanted desperately - still do - to give back, now that I'm able. On the face of things, great reason to move into the city, right? But something interesting kept happening: every time I talked to someone about it, they would ask immediately, "Oh so you'll be leaving the Oasis (church)?" To which I'd respond, "Noooo. I can make it out there on the weekends!" I'd then lay out my plans, how I was going to move the students I teach out here in the suburbs from Thursdays to Saturdays so I could come out here Saturday, teach, spend the night, and then be here for Sunday morning.
A conversation with Alex was perhaps the most helpful. He said, "You know, Ian, the city is a lot different from the suburbs."
"You don't say," said I.
He went on to explain, after that sarcastic remark I didn't really make but added because I like to think I'm witty, that in the city, one can find a church service at any time of any day, that it would be a monster inconvenience for anyone to travel out to the suburbs every weekend. Of course, there are people who do - Hannah, for instance - but on the whole it's just not practical.
This was the last of several conversations I had about moving, and, as I said, every last one of these people took it for granted that I'd not be continuing at the Oasis. Even after I laid out my plans for them, they would stare off into the middle-distance, trying but unable to make my plans make sense.
So what do you do when everyone around you (including yourself, though you don't readily admit it) is apprehensive about a particular choice you're considering? You don't make that choice! At least, this seems the sane response. Mark you, it wouldn't have stopped me before - several times it hasn't - but God is changing my heart. (This is happening by such infinitesimal gradations that, to me, it has gone almost unnoticed, would have but for my dad, who directed my attention thereto.)

So, I'll be moving to Batavia, which is a mere fifteen minutes from Aurora. The house is in a great location - walking distance from downtown Batavia, which is quaint, and right up the hill from the bike path, which I can follow along the Fox River straight into downtown Aurora. Also, I'll have, as my mom so delicately and hilariously put it, quiet neighbors, as the house abuts a cemetery.

That reminds me: I'm going to commit right here and now to use this new location next to the cemetery as a reminder to think much, in the words of Jonathan Edwards, on all occasions, of my dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.

Next year in Jerusalem!