Whoa. 7 years ago tomorrow we left Florida. I remember the great unknown like it was yesterday. Having never been to Michigan, I was SHOCKED and disturbed when we drove NORTH of CANADA to inhabit our new Mid-West home.
Leaving was the worst. That short season of goodbyes is vivid, still. I choke up sometimes thinking about saying goodbye to my Fitness girls, and the city that held YEARS of memories and my beautiful community. I told my father in law that I was concerned I wouldn’t make friends here, and concerned I legitimately was.
But God.
He was generously faithful to provide us with family-level friendships here. The stories, you guys...you might not even believe them. He had abundant answers, provision, and freedoms awaiting...for challenges and needs we didn’t know we even had.
If you know me, you know those first 5 of 7 years have been my hardest. Like...beyond. I totally would not redo those years if you paid me. However, at the end of life, and truthfully, even now... I look upon that time with solid gratitude for what it has forged within me, how it has core-changed us, and for the many dear, new kindred friends we now carry, presently and into the future. Too many to capture in 10 photos.
I hate March and April. There is no sugar coating the actual depression and cray it creates when the sky is an everlasting dome of gray and the brown snow-mud covers everything the winter murdered. All the while, the southerners swim and surf the beach. That being said...there is no greater rival for Summer or Fall than our amazing Michigan’s. Tim and I look at the post winter growth every year and are STILL SHOCKED that anything has survived. Beyond survival, actually...everything somehow blossoms and grows so amply that your eyes can almost detect the daily increase.
In many ways, these are is the larger lesson now tattooed on my soul...
During undesirable, hidden seasons marked with pain & humility, the fragrance of Christ, true & undefiled, begins its nativity within us...unaware, humanly mangers.
Suffering and hope can be held, simultaneously, in the same two hands.
And...against all odds...
From death, life.