As the Yeti nears the three week mark before his departure to more moutainous regions…(weird to say that being in the mountain-endowed state of Washington!)…I have been feeling a bit displaced.  I liken the experience to what it must feel like for a document to be "cut and pasted". 

If you’re a computer degenerate (not to be confused with a computer illiterate) you may not be familiar with this lingo cut and paste in any context other than kindergarten craft projects.  And if you’ve never actually cut and pasted a document (or other bit of information, i.e. pictures, text, etc.) using your Windows-based Microsoft-monopolized computer system, you really should try it some time.  I must warn you though; it will make you feel pretty powerful and could lead to much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I typically find myself cutting documents from Windows Explorer when I want to move them to another folder on my computer.  When I do the cutting, (and there’s probably a million easier ways to do it so please don’t bore me with the superior alternate methods you geeks have invented!) I usually select the file, push the Ctrl then "X" key and watch as the icon for the document fades into, what I call, a translucent ghost file.  Like an alien abduction the file is still there and yet it isn’t (at least in theory).

Now you see me, now you don’t.

This mysterious ghost file has been exhumed from its current cemetery plot on my hard drive, but remains in a state of limbo until I send it to its final resting place.  This is the point in time that I always get nervous.  Right after the cut, but before the paste.  I’ve done it a thousand times, but I don’t know what would happen if my computer were to crash or freeze at this moment.  Would the file be recoverable at that point?  Or would it suffer the fate of total cyber displacement. It’s really a psychological fear more than anything in the rational technologically scientific realm.  I rarely think through it, but it kind of gnaws at the subconscious level.  I’ve cut and pasted files and EVEN entire folders (awe and wonder!) thousands of times and yet no matter how many times I perform this function, it feels hairy to me.  Sketchy.  But I’m digressing…

I guess this cut/paste ghost file sensation is what I’m going through on a higher level now. As I pack my families belongings, decide what items should be sold, what items should be dumped, what items should be stored, and try to determine what to bring to a culture I’ve never lived in nor visited, it’s hard to feel at home in one’s turtle shell.  I’m unemployed (in one sense), transient, translucent, molting, and vulnerable. 

And yet in this pre-paste phase of life, nothing is better.  There is mystery in the unveiling and I like that…a lot.  This is a movement that I’ve planned for, prepared for, and pray through.  I have not been alone in this and I don’t really feel the desperation of feeling completely alone.  But I think it is hard to feel that sheen of invisibility, to know the reality that your roots are dangling a few inches above the earth you’ve known, and to feel that opaque tension of hovering between known and unknown.  It’s hard to look at the Major League Baseball standings with the same sense of urgency.

Oh well, eventually God hits Ctrl + V and we’re all home again.  Just not sure if that’s going to ever really be the case for me and my family…maybe not totally in this life.  And that’s OK, too.  Some of my favorite verses in Hebrews help me feel OK about being a ghost file:

All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.  For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own.  And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return.  But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them.