Robert Frost once said "In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: it goes on. I've always enjoyed the poetry of Robert Frost and somehow it was no surprise I suspect that when my life got turned upside down recently and I started to wonder what was happening in my life, that I would return to his three simple words...it goes on.

I sit her writing this post as a team of packers are moving methodically through the house putting everything into boxes. There is the constant sound of rustling papers as things are wrapped and packed. This is punctuated periodically by the scratching sounds of tape being pulled over boxes and new boxes being assembled. Every now and again someone finds me to tell me that they can't pack things like light bulbs or matches or even ammunition, the latter I thought was all out of the house by now.

But the real story began months ago as we started to plan for this trip. It was overwhelming at first. We had accumulated so much over the years. Not all of it was our fault...we inherited much of it. With each move in our life we clean out what seems to be literally tons of stuff. This was no exception. The "downsizing" of possessions is in many ways painful. What you acquire, you tend to acquire because you like it and as such it becomes a part of you or at least a part of your life. I took more than six hundred pounds of books to the thrift store and donated them. It was painful. I read every one of those books, they were stories that took me on adventures, piqued my emotions, taught me, encouraged me or just amused me but they all were part of the fabric of my life. But, now they are gone.

Load after load of stuff went the way of the books. Crock pots, rice cookers, fondue pots, clothes, tools, and so on and so on. We had to call in a junk man to take some of the stuff, it was just too big to load up and haul away ourselves. A 1920's era tandem bike that I have been promising to restore for the past three decades is gone. So is the treadmill that quit working after the last move, the adjustable bed that no longer adjusted and so on and so on.

For some time it was depressing. It felt like part of me was going away with each load. And then the words of Robert Frost echoed. It goes on. The clearing out of the house was in part because we are of an age where if we don't do this our children will get stuck with it and part of it was because we are going to try to downsize our living arrangements when we finally settle down so that we can travel more and do the things we always promised we would do when we retired. But most importantly the downsizing was important because it was in a way freeing or liberating. There is just so much one can do with all that stuff. It takes up space, it requires space, it takes time and in many ways it represents all the things we thought we could, would or should do that we won't do.

I've discovered I prefer a gym to the treadmill in the basement, I prefer walks to bike rides, I prefer risotto to just cooked rice. These are all things that I now have time to do since retiring that I couldn't do before. I prefer time with my grandchildren to time alone in a workshop. I prefer seeing the real world to just reading about it. And so life does go on. We change over time, our needs, our preferences, our likes and dislikes even reality changes over time.

The move had me terrified for a while. I was worried that I didn't know where we were going to live. How could we downsize stuff without knowing how much room we would have. I worried about the time in Paris. Where would we live, how would we communicate. All that is important, I know, but in the scheme of things it all works out. I am learning more about trusting and being comfortable with letting go of things knowing that in the end God will watch over us and things will work out. This too has been a freeing experience. And now I am not terrified of the unknowns in the future...life will go on and we will survive, God willing.

So now we are at the point where we have nothing left to do. The movers are packing the stuff of our lives and all we can do is answer the occasional question...yes that is old...no that does not go...label that Living Room or Bedroom or Narnia...but all in all we are now to the point where life is going on. How it goes is the adventure.

When all is said and done...tomorrow evening the truck will pull out of the driveway and we will be left with a bit of cleanup and then loading the car and we will drive off into the Chicago sunset and head into our next adventure. Life will go on and for now I can't wait to see where it goes from here.