Hello December

If a year could fold and roll and jam itself into a week, I'm pretty sure this woulda been the week.

The days were...well...packed.  Painting, scrubbing grout, replacing light bulbs, cleaning carpets, filling boxes.  Add a garnish of sickness and fever (because we do moving and the big 3-0 up right around here).  It's been, well, you know, like trying to fit everything back into your suitcase at the end of a trip and looking everything over, wondering how you got it all in in the first place.

Our last day in our house came and went.  It was appropriately wet and rainy with a slight chill in the air.  I always find it funny when the weather seems to match my heart.  Like the clouds and sky just knew not to be sunny, happy.

There's something about the ebbs of moving that make you link arms with people.  Same goal.  Common purpose.  Can I just say it would have been IMPOSSIBLE to move and be ready to move without our family and friends?  You all have done things you probably didn't really want to do but wanted to help us.  So sincerely, thank you. 

And I'm not sure how you are supposed to say good-bye to place.  We reminisced.  We laughed.  We thanked our sweet Savior for His many kindnesses.  We cried a little, too.

And if Eden was there, she'd say "Cheers!" with a big ol' smile ('cuz she loves to "cheers" at anything - crackers, apple slices, chocolate milk).  So we lifted full hearts and cheered to the years of our house, to roots that grew deeper in that place.

We drank deep and then Jon and I walked out the way we walked in 4 1/2 years ago...just the two of us.  Together.

Thankful, as we were for the friends and family that watched them as we scurried about, we missed the other half of us.  So we took a few delicious days to regroup and reinstate family.

We discovered and played together.

We hiked in the snow for the perfect fir together.

Lesson learned?  We are still home.  And as we closed the front door to our house for the last time, we were thankful.  We get to keep all that was really important about that place.

And as we fill up our suitcase hearts for this season of "For God so loved the world..." we are happy and together.  And, oh, how we are loved...

I never realized God's birth before,

How He grew likest God in being born...

Such ever loves' way - to rise, it stoops.

(Robert Browning)