The rules of the game keep changing. But when I look more closely, when I actually grapple with life as it happens, I begin to strongly suspect that the rules don’t exist as I think they do, and it’s not a game–it’s more.

We found out yesterday that the owners of our house are moving back in, in two months’ time. Just like last year: different house, different owners, same scenario. Searching, packing, unpacking, adjusting. This is not what home is supposed to look like, is it? Sitting still momentarily in a place we don’t own, only to be thrust out after a few months?

Anxiety laps at my rough edges, threatening (as always) to undo me.

I found out yesterday, in the form of a text from The Husband, the one (but not The One) who brought us here in the first place, his texts emissaries from the true author of our story, upending the Known for the Unknown and whispering gifts at the same time that I was too anxious to hear until later. I was on the Ferris wheel with our boys, the second Ferris wheel in as many days, finding out about the second move in as many years, and it wasn’t lost on me, suspended as we were there over the water of the harbour, the bridge nearly close enough to touch, the Opera House practically beside it, these landmarks of our now-home dotting our view as we sat there, in motion yet still, helpless in the sky with an incomparable view: this is life.

I struggled to regain control. Anxiety works like this: always grab for control. I imagined our gondola free-falling into the water below; how would I secure our exit with steel bars blocking our way? On to more manageable things then: realestate.com.au. I resisted the urge to grab for the phone, the boys clambering over me. I tried to trust. It felt both Herculean and natural.

There is a moment now that wasn’t always there, but has been growing since I was a high schooler who, looking back on life, had finally realised that my constant surprise at grace always coming through for me might be more a reflection of my own distrustfulness than a verifiable slight on the nature of unconditional love. “Maybe I should just…trust from the beginning?” I thought then, imagining a life where that was possible, and how it would look. Less sweat, more peace. What a concept!

And now, at forty, at mid-life (ugh) if I’m lucky, I’m different and not. Similar yet changed. These upendings, these shock waves via text, they are somehow accompanied by an undercurrent of surety: as my New York roommate once said (when I found out I falsely owed ten grand in taxes), “this is not a surprise to God.” Grace remains unperturbed by the waves that rock my life, and so they don’t pummel me like they used to. The text came, and with it–before the urge to grasp at control–there was that assurance, that moment that used to not exist, that awareness: “Oh, this is going to be okay. This is part of our story. We are not suspended; we are held.” I sat there for a moment.

Then the Ferris wheel moved, as it always does, and the boys scattered, and I grabbed for the phone, but even in my grabbing and searching I knew, knew, that I wasn’t in control, and this somehow amounted to freedom. Oh, it sucks. Don’t get me wrong: it truly, truly BLOWS, the searching and packing and unpacking and unknown and adjustments, and when I think about it too much I want to simultaneously head for the bottle and barf. But. With all that is the almost giddy, insane certainty that this is not a game but a story. That we are ridiculously and lavishly loved. And that this changes everything.

So I both have to look at the real estate website…and I get to.

Last weekend we went to the Hunter Valley, New South Wales’s wine country, with the boys. Wine tasting is…different with children around. More bounce houses, less lingering sips. More laughter. A little of less, and a lot of more. Saturday morning, we went to the pool instead of champagne brunch, and I went underwater with The Kid. Under the surface, I “talked” to him, and he laughed. We tried to understand each others’ words. It was a level playing field for me, the one who’s been speaking for decades, and he, the one who still struggles to be understood. It’s not like we could breathe under there, but somehow we could speak. It was a new world, just one thin layer beneath the one we know. One where we were suspended, and held.

The next day we went into the city with friends to watch a live-action seizure-inducing PJ Masks show, and afterward the boys and I got turned around finding our car park. I felt anxiety lap at my rough edges, felt the rules shifting under my feet again: Why does this always happen to me, this getting lost over and over? Several blocks’ hike and one car spotted later, and a different question: Why don’t I question why it also happens to me, this always being found?