We were home from our European adventure for about 12 hours, when I got a call from my sister.

This is the sister I honored in my last grace notes for retiring, but it turns out she was only retired for two months, since she accepted a job at the last minute in the same school district–states away– where her daughter had a month before landed her first long term, full time job. This gave them only two weeks to move everything. All this was daunting and unexpected, but wonderful too, since they’d get to continue to stay together and share expenses. She and her daughter needed our help with the move. Could we do it?

Well, it turned out to be our only unscheduled week of the summer, when I thought I’d be floating in the quarry and getting some work done after our big trip. But all of a sudden, we were flying to her former home to help her and her daughter move.

Thus began a week long odyssey, of packing them up, loading and unloading two trucks (with three hired guys at each end), and driving the two trucks 12 hours (through mountains) to their new location.

I drove the 26′ truck, which was dicey because it chugged up the hills excruciatingly slowly, and then went careening down them like a missile, made worse at every curve. My husband drove the 16′ truck, and my sister and niece followed in their car with their dog. Both trucks were packed tightly to the gills. As I mentioned to another niece, “You might have been able to get a toothpick in there, but you couldn’t get in a whole box of them!”

The new house my sister and her daughter had never even seen (except for Facetime), but fortunately it turned out to be a strong improvement over her last place. Still, we had to figure out where things were going to go as they walked in the door, instead of having a plan in advance. With boxes four high everywhere, it was tricky to arrange anything. We stayed extra days to help her past this impasse. My husband was particularly helpful, and my project management skills from my engineering days came in handy. When my sister says she couldn’t have done it without us, it is no hyperbole, just plain, bald fact.

She asked me what the moral of the story would be on this blog, and she thought it would be to have less stuff. Well, yes my sister needs to weed her belongings; she brought two 5′ wooden sleds to a place it doesn’t snow, for example. And yes, when I worked so very hard to get her organized and settled in, it does make me want to put a similar kind of focused effort into my own life, and streamline our stuff (eek; our basement!).

However, for me, the moral is more that this is what you do for family. We selflessly poured ourselves into improving someone else’s future, and come away with the satisfaction of knowing it not only blessed them, but it blessed us too. Sometimes I think when we help someone else, it gives us more than it takes.

And in among all this exhausting, sweaty work, there were gorgeous skies, Krispy Kreme donuts, and the biggest thunderclap you ever heard on both ends, bookending the trucks being loaded and unloaded. I see God’s hand all over their unfolding progress, and it feels good to have been part of that!