moving on.

on friday i turn 30 and i saturday we move. two pretty major things in life. leaving my 20's and becoming a homeowner. it feels right. i am grateful for our life and where our family is right now.

when we moved here in september 2011 i was anxious, insecure, afraid, and sad. i covered that up by telling people (along with myself) that this move was"right" and "made sense" and "was what was best for our family."but in my heart it felt unfair. i wasn't ready for something new. new house, new town, new people (that's the scariest by far), new life. my heart was in chesapeake. i deserved the river house. i deserved rest. our family was entitled to having a second. i just finished chemotherapy. you know for cancer. it is actually kinda of a serious deal so we deserve a break. we deserve some time to heal and reflect and we deserve to do that alongside the people that just carried us through cancer and dang it i want to keep on enjoying this amazing house with gorgeous sunsets. these are our people and this is our home and i want to stay right here. cancer was big and life changing and i am not sure what it all means yet for myself and my relationship with jesus and my husband and my baby. oh, my sweet baby. i needed a second. because that's what make senses and feels right and we just were beginning to get to the other side of our valley so let me just be here. no cancer. no chemo. no hair loss. no fear. i wanted to wrap my head around the fact that holy crap i just had cancer and had a baby. not to mention i got a little chubby, lost my hair (confession: i think often about how i should have just shaved my head. been strong and courageous and owned that bald look. that grey hat was ugly and my desperate attempt to keep my "hair" which was actually just a few wispy strains was simply rooted in fear and denial. but mostly fear. what would people say? what i look like? it would be embarrassing. but looking back that grey hat was pretty embarrassing) and oh, yes raised our sweet ava, started a blog, fell more in love with my husband and my relationship with the Lord was forever changed. He wrecked me in cancer. in the most incredibly way He showed me what mattered and what life in complete devotion to Him could look like. the God i serve uses awful things like cancer to transform my life and my heart and the entire purpose of life. which is to love, trust, and obey Jesus. 

cancer is hard. kids are hard. marriage is hard. life is hard. blah, blah. i do not say that to discount your heart or my own heart. my desire is to be empathetic to the stories we all have and the life we are living and sometimes they straight up suck. i hate that. i would not choose pain or heartache or loss or fear or depression or an eating disorder or a move or cancer or death or whatever it is you are walking in or will walk in or plagues you or keeps you up at night. i would not choose it. easy is more fun.

but.

but without those things. whatever your thing is...well we don't grow. we don't break. we don't realize who we are and what we are about and what we can be and who we can be and whose we are. i know that my life matters...not because of cancer or justin or ava or lyla or a job or a skill or an education or whatever, you fill in your own blank. those things don't matter when it comes to the core of whose we are and why our life matters. my life matters because Jesus says it matters. not for any earthly person, or place or thing or some big fat accomplishment. it doesn't really matter. but He matters. He matters because He is a game changer. a life changer. i have a hope that runs deeper and wider than anything else this silly broken little world could ever offer me.

so it is easier to be comfortable? heck yeah it is. to stay put? to be safe? of course it is. but i promise. i believe it so deeply and passionately that i will never stop talking about it. the Lord allowed one of the scariest things to grow and multiply and spread throughout my body and then used poison for 6 months in my body to heal me. He healed me. He brought me from death to life. That is what Jesus is about. wait...that is the ONLY thing He is about. He is about bringing us from the darkest, scariest, most embarrassing places to the light. to eternal freedom and life and hope and purpose.

so was it scary to leave a place where my heart was so rooted it felt like someone was tearing off my arm the day we drove away from the river house. yup it did. i cried. i pretended to be fine. but mostly i made it real clear that this was going to be the worst thing ever. but in the midst of the despair and depression and putting on a happy face. joy crept in. laughter. hope. excitement. love. you see i learned to trust Jesus with my life when i had cancer. so when the Lord opened doors for us to move to harrisonburg for all sorts of wonderful things...i was in. i was scared and mad and stayed home a lot. but i was in. because for the rest of my life no matter how scary something seems or how hard or when we beg the Lord to make it easier and He doesn't...i believe His purpose (whatever it might be because sometimes i can not make sense of some really awful things that happen) is the best. His plan...well it becomes our plan. what He has for me and for justin and for our girls and for our friends, and our leaders, and yl, and this whole city...i believe it has purpose and meaning and significance. no matter what.

we want what make sense. we want things to work out. we want things to be easy. because hard is hard and i hate hard. but let's all get on board with a Jesus that is for you and your life and often times has far more going on than our little brains can handle. so maybe we should stop being so mad when something goes wrong or when life get's a little challenging or we just want someone to even pretend to care about our hard stuff and our story and how unfair it is and how hard it is. by no means have i walked through the toughest of the toughest or your story or your pain or crap. but as i think back on these past tens years in my twenties...i've had a few things that one would warrant a little tough. so i am not here to discount or ignore your pain or your hurt or how it's not fair. i hate it for you. but i believe that we are given in choice...either wallow or get on board. i think we need both. i needed to feel sorry myself in cancer a little bit and when we moved and how mad i was and how much i wanted just a break. i remember screaming in the upstairs of the river house..."are you freaking kidding me? (but in real life i cussed) move? start over? i can't. i don't even know what just happened these 6 months and now i have to be nice and meet people and make good first impressions and lead things and be who people/i expect myself to be...well i can't. that's too hard." i yelled that and then i continued packing boxes because there was a storm and the river house flooded and the Lord was like...hey, since you aren't really making any active attempts to leave this city and move on...i will flood the house (not destroy your stuff...thank goodness) but it is time to go. i have you and i love you and if you trust me to carry you through cancer i will carry you through anything. so when it got hard and i got sad and i was uncomfortable and needed friends and pregnancy was hard and pop pop passed away and lyla failed to sleep and etc, etc, etc. you know what? He carried me. He never left me. He didn't alway make it easy or simple or let me sleep 12 hours. but He had me and that's enough.

because now this small little place i reluctantly moved to two years ago. well now it has my heart. our first purchased home. two babies. incredibly friendships with women in similar seasons of life along with women in college who i desperate love. a church. a community. we've found our people. and although my heart aches for my friendships outside of harrisonburg i know that our heart has enough room for them all. but this place took time. it took time for me to fall in love. it was hard and i cried and i felt alone. but i rested in the Lord and what He had for me and even though a tiny part of me confidently i knew this move was where He wanted us...i still didn't want to go and that is one of the most valuable lessons i learned in my 20's. life often ends up looking different than we thought and in that difference we can cry and yell and beg the Lord to take it away. but for me i have found that running parallel to the hard things is the constant comfort and peace and hope that Jesus is for me and will never leave me and that is where i stake my life.