Prelude to Risk, pt. 1 (or Chapter 1)

May 1992. I sit down on the floor of my empty bedroom, legs in front of me, arms folded across my knees. I’ll celebrate 16 years in roughly a month’s time, but it won’t be here. My mother, brother, and sister are somewhere else in this imminently vacant house. It is, at this moment, the only home I’ve ever known. The next one is waiting for us on the other side of the world.

The late afternoon sun pours through the window ahead to my right. I see the west side of Mr. and Mrs. Woody’s house. A couple of years earlier, my siblings and I raced outside in the night through a category 1 hurricane and sought shelter next door with them to escape an appliance fire in our home after a power surge. From there, wet in our bedclothes from the rain, we watched the fire trucks roll up to our driveway in the darkness and heavy wind. We lived to tell the tale of a house that didn’t burn down, which, admittedly, would have been a far more interesting story.

I look to my left through the long, narrow window running along the upper quarter of the wall, an architectural oddity seldom featured on any current home improvement show. The inner shade of a tree my siblings and I named “The Jungle” years ago is all that’s visible. We and our neighborhood friends spent many afternoons hidden inside its branches, concealed from the world outside, imagining ourselves in any number of places but here. 

Life is said to flash before your eyes in a moment that may be your last. As I sit here still and silent — house empty, memories full —  my brief life flashes before me in a matter of minutes. I’ll still be breathing in a moment, but it feels like an ending, and I’m not prepared for it. I don’t know it yet, but this moment will indelibly be seared on my mind in the years to come. 

“It’s time.”

I look to my right and see my mother leaning against the doorframe. Until I entered the bedroom for the last time, I thought this departure would be uneventful and gave it barely a second thought. Few of us, however, especially the youngest among us, have the foresight to anticipate a moment that will impact us for the rest of our lives. 

Her words land like a gunshot. Without warning, the tears start to flow like a bleeding wound and express what I won’t be able to in words until years from now, after the maturity of hindsight — this place, this home, has unwittingly been a sixth member of the family. Within it, I’ve felt safe and secure. Now I have to leave that safety, these memories, and the only life I’ve known.

My mother walks toward me and sits down on the floor. She puts her arms around me as I sob. She will tell me years later that until then, she didn’t know how hard this change would be for my siblings and me. 

I soon collect myself and we get up to leave. I take a few last looks at the empty rooms before we exit and pile into the car.  Many years from now, I will have the opportunity to revisit this place, without understanding why, to find the guidance to make a decision that will impact a child, much as my parents’ decision now impacts me. 

As we drive away, I find myself unable to imagine what lies ahead of us thousands of miles away in what was long a Cold War country until only months ago. For our family, the wider world is a place we’ve seen only in pictures or on TV.  The farthest east we’ve traveled is Florida; the farthest west, Colorado. Where we are going, the news of the world describes turmoil and unrest. “Safety” and “security” are no bywords, and my parents appear to friends and family to be recklessly abandoning both, along with their sanity. They’ve quit jobs, sold the house and our possessions, and have prepared to move themselves and their three older children to this place in faith that God spoke and commanded them to do so.  

“Go from your country, your people, and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”

They are taking a leap of faith, and time will soon tell if these words spoken to another sojourner thousands of years ago are, for them, deeper and more direct than a mere inspiration, as they believe, or if they are out of their minds, taking a desperate mid-life gamble that will, in the end, leave them more confused and uncertain of their purpose in the world God has made. 

“So Abram went, as the Lord told him.”