Preaching Against Arrival While Living in the Boxes

There is a particular kind of irony in preaching about the arrival fallacy while being in the process of applying for a loan, purchasing a new house, and surrounded by a growing stack of moving boxes.

Recently, I found myself standing in a pulpit, talking about the temptation to believe that life will finally feel settled, peaceful, or complete once we reach some future milestone.

Once we arrive. Once the transition is over. Once everything is in its proper place.

And then I went home… and started house hunting.

It’s humbling, really, to preach a truth on Sunday and then spend the rest of the week trying to believe it yourself.

Because if I’m honest, there’s a part of me that keeps thinking, Once the move is done, then I’ll breathe easier. Once we’re settled, then life will feel normal again. Once everything is unpacked, then I’ll feel at home.

That’s the arrival fallacy in its most ordinary form. Not grand dreams or distant goals—just the quiet hope that peace is waiting on the other side of the next big task.

And yet, even as I feel that pull, I know better. Not in an abstract, theological way—but in the way you know something because life has taught it to you over and over again. There is no moment when everything is finished and tidy and finally complete. Life keeps unfolding. There is always another change, another beginning, another unknown.

The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m preaching about being present while my house will soon be filled with half-packed rooms and lists taped to every flat surface. It turns out it’s much easier to talk about presence than it is to practice it when you’re trying to remember which box you put the coffee maker in.

But maybe that’s exactly why the message matters.

We don’t preach or write or pray because we’ve mastered these things. We do it because we’re still learning. Because we need the reminder as much as anyone else. Because sometimes saying the truth out loud is one way of helping our own hearts catch up to it.

And so I’m practicing, imperfectly, being present in the middle of it all.

Present with the grief of saying goodbye to people who have walked with me for eight years. The kind of grief that sneaks up in unexpected moments—when someone tells a story you’ve heard a dozen times, when you walk through a familiar doorway, when you realize there are ordinary rhythms you won’t share in quite the same way again.

And present with the joy of what is unfolding. The curiosity about what new relationships will grow, what new stories will be written, what new glimpses of grace will appear in places I can’t yet imagine.

Both are real. Both are holy.

What I’m slowly learning is that transitions aren’t something to get through as quickly as possible. They are something to live through. To pay attention to. To honor.

Even the packing.

Especially the packing.

So much packing.

Because every object I will wrap in paper carries a memory. Every room we will empty tells a story about the life that was lived there. Every goodbye, however hopeful, is still a goodbye.

And perhaps the deeper irony is this: the life I am tempted to postpone until after the move is already happening now.

Grace isn’t waiting at the destination.

Peace isn’t packed in a box labeled “Open First.”

God isn’t only present in what comes next.

God is here—in the clutter, in the laughter, in the tears that come unexpectedly, in the long to-do lists and the quiet moments in between them.

So I’ll keep preaching about the arrival fallacy beyond Lent.

And I keep trying, day by day, to live what I preach—holding joy and grief in the same hands, breathing in the present moment, and trusting that even this in-between space is part of the sacred journey.