A Prayer for Your Last Night in the House You're Leaving

The last boxes are sealed or they aren't. The rooms echo now, because the furniture is gone and the sound has nowhere soft to land. You are standing in a house that is still legally yours for a few more hours and already feels like somebody else's. Maybe you are lying on a mattress on the floor because the bed frame went in the van this afternoon. This prayer is for tonight, this particular night, not the move in general.

The house is empty except for you

There is a particular kind of tired that comes from packing a life into boxes. It is not just the physical work. It is the way every room you walk through now says something to you. This is where the children learned to walk. This is where you sat up all night once, worried about something you can't even remember now. This is where the paint colour was chosen badly and you never got round to fixing it.

Ecclesiastes names this without trying to smooth it over.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1–8

The writer isn't trying to cheer anyone up. This is a list of a life fully lived, and it includes losing things as plainly as it includes finding them. It does not tell you which season you're in and it does not tell you the next one will be better. It just says that a time to build up and a time to break down are both real, both allowed, both part of what a life is made of. Tonight is a plucking-up night. That's not a failure. It's just what this particular night is.

A stone for a pillow

There's a man in Genesis who spends a night away from everything familiar with nothing to soften it. Jacob has left his father's house. He is not home and he is not yet anywhere else. He stops because the sun has set, not because he has arrived.

Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went towards Haran. He came to a certain place, and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. He took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep. He dreamt and saw a stairway set upon the earth, and its top reached to heaven. Behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. I will give the land you lie on to you and to your offspring. Your offspring will be as the dust of the earth, and you will spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. In you and in your offspring, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Behold, I am with you, and will keep you, wherever you go, and will bring you again into this land. For I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken of to you.” Jacob awakened out of his sleep, and he said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I didn’t know it.” He was afraid, and said, “How awesome this place is! This is none other than God’s house, and this is the gate of heaven.”