There is comfort in remembering

Recalling lessons of God's presence and power

Two years ago, my husband and I thought a lot about our sources of comfort. What could and couldn’t we live without? For months we pondered selling our Toronto-area home of 31 years to move across the country. It was not a decision we arrived at quickly; we’d both lived our entire lives in southern Ontario. But our three kids had grown into young adults who’d moved far from home in pursuit of job opportunities and more affordable housing: our son to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, our two daughters with their husbands to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Moving ourselves would mean the joy of being closer to our kids and their families. Being in our senior years, however, such a move would require parting with familiar comforts—not just home, neighbourhood, and city with their decades of heart memories, but also the consolations of our church, nearness to family members, neighbours, and a lifetime of friends.

Our deliberations began with longing—longing for our far-away children and grandbabies. We ached to be near enough to provide support and help, a yearning that intensified during the pandemic when our kids found themselves with a newborn and without social support.

The desire increased when one of our sons-in-law suggested casually, “You guys should move here.” I remember being quick to respond, “I could never…” But a Winnipeg seed had been planted in my heart. And as the months went by, that seed sprouted—watered by wistful conversations with my husband and warmed by Zoom calls with a spiritual director, whom I’d reached out to for help discerning God’s will for the next stage of life.

Each time we met, the spiritual director invited me into God’s presence, encouraging me to grow comfortable with stillness and silence. And it was in stillness and silence one morning—after weeks of praying and wrestling, compiling lists of pros and cons, and seeking the advice of others whom we respected—that I sensed God say, “It’s okay to want to invest in the future, in the next generation.”

When we are young, we try to live in conscious pursuit of our goals. But at a certain age, the realization that we’ve logged more days behind us than remain ahead of us becomes clear. Friends start to die, the dawn of each new day becomes more precious, and our dreams become laser-focused. I realized I want to live whatever years I have left with intentionality and to invest in the lives of my children and grandchildren.

We had our answer

We had our answer. It felt like a calling. Together, my husband and I determined to fix our eyes on the future, to follow God where we sensed He was leading us, and to never look back with regret.

Even so, the prospect of a cross-country move felt risky, a great leap into the unknown. Would we make new friends? Where would we live? Were we really ready to give up our family home? What about a church? Would we find a doctor in a province experiencing severe physician shortages?

Friends and family members received our news with understanding and support. It felt like God had gone before us.

We purged and donated everything from furniture to books to sports equipment, sold off the lawn mower and garden implements, and sorted and gifted long treasured collectibles—downsizing the detritus of a lifetime’s worth of living. Our home sold in two days to a young Christian couple. They wrote us a letter saying they wanted to have and raise their babies there. We had been praying that God would send good people with hearts to bless our aging neighbours.

Moving day

When the moving truck pulled away, we drove down the driveway for the final time, leaving behind the backyard in which we raised children and flowers, vegetables and herbs, with its seasons of sandbox and snowmen, tire swing and leaf piles, swimming pool and friends gathered under the twinkle of patio lights. We left the gorgeous trembling aspen, 40 feet tall, which had sprouted up from a wind-carried seed in a patio pot one summer to be enthusiastically transplanted into the soil by our kids. We left the rhubarb plant taken from a cutting in my parents’ garden; and the forget-me-nots planted from seeds gathered from flowers at my grandparents’ home.

We settled quickly into a seventh-floor condo on the banks of Winnipeg’s Assiniboine River and were soon hosting family and neighbours for meals and visits around our table. We tapped into a wonderful church within walking distance. The congregation welcomed us into service opportunities and a small care group, people who today feel like dear friends. After placing our names on a provincial waitlist, we were assigned to a family physician whose office is also within walking distance and were amazed to discover that he, too, is a person of Christian faith.

Ground made smooth

At every step of that enormous life transition, it felt like God had prepared the way for us, going before us to raise up every valley and lower every hill and walking beside us on ground that we sensed He had made smooth.

Today, as I recall those lessons pointing to God’s presence and power, I feel gratitude but also a determination to remember them in the years ahead; because once again, I am reflecting on sources of comfort.

Within months of our move, our children were prodding me to have their father tested for cognitive impairment. A little over a year later, we received word that Doug is living with frontotemporal degeneration and corticobasal syndrome—a rare and aggressive form of dementia.

This is new terrain. Where I once took solace in familiar surroundings and long-held friendships, today a different landscape has come into view, one with unknown surroundings to explore and friendships to appreciate. Those things are generous gifts from a gracious Giver, but each is also a sign pointing to the One the Apostle Paul describes as “the God of all comfort,”—the Source of all consolation.

Even as I grieve the losses that I see in the man who has loved me so long and so well, and anticipate the losses I am told will come, it comforts me to know that none of this has taken God by surprise.

In remembering His faithfulness to us in the past, my faith grows stronger, giving me confidence that the One in whom all good things originate has been with us, is with us, and will continue to be with us come what may.