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We were moving again. We would be leaving the custom home we'd built, the home with the vaulted cedar ceiling and the French doors and used brick and the library with the oak shelves and hardwood floor. The Montana home my husband had said we would live in for as long as we lived on this earth.

I'd been uprooted six times in 17 years—and that didn't include the motels and apartments we'd occupied while waiting for yet another house. Now—after having lived for two years in my dream-come-true, Scotty had been offered another promotion. We would be leaving, again, the land I loved. We'd be heading for the federal agency's national headquarters on the East Coast.

"I can't do it," I said. Not only was I recuperating from a recent surgery, but every one of the preceding migrations had taken so much out of me. When we'd moved to this home from Pennsylvania, I hadn't been able to work for months. All of my equipment—my computer, typewriter, printers, and disks—had gone into storage. Even my file folders and addresses for editors. Everything. Everything that made me feel like me.

	"I don't have a home anymore!" I shouted. "I have no identity!"

It would be a three-day pack this time, they told us. They would begin with the glassware and everything on the second floor.

"No, please no," I whispered. Not the second floor. My office was up there—the office I'd prayed for—the miniature study up under the eaves with a view of the mountains and the pond and the deer. From up there, I watched sunsets and speckled fawns and listened in April to newborn calves beyond a stand of cottonwood and across the creek. And I wrote.

I wrote in the morning and after lunch. I watched the seasons change in the meadow across the road and delighted in winter's first snowfall. In the spring, I watched for the fox that frequented the spot out back where I'd planted 200 flowering bulbs.

"Scotty," I pleaded.

"You can't go into her study," Scotty began, "until you're done with the garage and the rest of the house." He wrapped his arms around me. "She needs to work," he said.

Ready to explode
We both knew I wouldn't be working at all. I would be grieving, stalling, hiding from yet another troop of packers. I would be wondering about friendships I'd leave behind and doubting I had it in me to find more. I would be sorting through rough drafts and daydreams on paper and thinking my career was over, that this time I would shut down for good.

For two days, I ate in my study while Scotty supervised everything else in our home. I could hear them working below me, then in the bedroom next door.

The third day, they cleared the crawl space. They were digging deep, now, in the garage. Nothing left, really, except the study where I'd been secluded.

Scotty had promised he wouldn't let them pack my computer and printers. He'd saved the boxes, he'd pack them himself. "But, Babe, it's time," he said. "We can't put them off any longer." The crew had other jobs to go to.

"Please … " I needed just a few more minutes. "Please," I whispered again at the door. "Just give me a little more time."

I was sitting on the carpet in the middle of the room, trying to hear God, trying to understand why he would bless my husband and not me. I had journals full of my words about believing and times when I'd noted God's words, as well. I'd been trying for years to line up with his plan. Now, we were moving? I was being asked to give it all up again?

"God!" I screamed. I threw a devotional book against the wall. "Why?" I threw a favorite Bible, too. "Not only are they going to pack up everything that identifies me … " The words clawed at my throat. " … we have no place to go!"

All of our belongings, except for two suitcases of clothing and cosmetics, would be stored in a distant warehouse. I'd be staying in my youngest daughter's cellar.

"I don't have a home anymore!" I shouted. "I have no identity!" I shrieked, slamming my fist at the wall. Then I heard my phone.

Special delivery
The woman at the other end sounded as if she were beside herself, too. I didn't recognize her voice. Who was she?

"Are you Nancy Hoag?" she asked.

I wasn't, not really. I tried to clear my throat, tried to talk. "I am," I managed.

"Praise God, praise God," she said, beginning to get teary.

Praise God for what? I wondered.

"You don't know me," she said. "I'm a pastor's wife in Jackson, Ohio, and we were missionaries in Papua, New Guinea, for years—but I've never done anything like this."

Never done what?

"I was having my quiet time this morning," she continued without taking a breath, "and the devotion I was using had been written by you and God spoke to me and said I was to find you."

Now, she was openly crying. "I don't know where you are or anything about your situation."

The hair on my arms tingled as I felt a chill wrap around me. My heart grew still.

"But," the pastor's wife said, "he told me I was to find you and give you a message."

The goose bumps traveled my body like fingers on piano keys. I wanted to tell her where I was but the words wouldn't come.

"So this is it," the shaken woman said. "He wants me to tell you … " Tears caught in my throat as I heard them catch in hers. "He knows your name and he knows your address." She paused as I gasped and started weeping.

My name? It was going with my belongings into storage. My address? I had nothing to put on a forwarding card. She couldn't have imagined. But God knew.

"You couldn't have known," I began—and listened as her explanation began again. She'd been afraid to make the call, but the Spirit had spoken clearly to her. She'd felt foolish, but she'd known almost from the beginning that God wasn't going to accept her no.

For the first time in weeks, my tears were joyful. At the other end of our winter drive what would happen? Would I write again? Would we find a home? Would I make another friend?

It didn't matter. What mattered was that I had not lost my identity. "I know your name," God had said. And, though I hadn't yet seen it with my own eyes, he was preparing a place for me. "I know your address."

Editor's note: Nancy survived that move in 1992 and two more since. One address she hasn't forgotten: that of Sara, the pastor's wife in Ohio, who has become a faithful pen pal.

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