Trust, Faith and Moving

Well, the update is...  there is no update.

Okay - there sortof is, the house is on the market.  We are coming up on 2 weeks.  We've had 15 showings and no takers.  Seriously?  And my house is looking pretty darn fine.

We are looking at homes in Colorado but really can't do much until our house sells.

So, we wait.

The main thing I'm noticing is, I don't like waiting. This is a major strain for me.  I have no idea why it is so hard, except that I love to plan.  I love to plan out my days, weeks, months. At this point, I can't plan much.  I don't know our moving date, I don't know which town we will move to, and I really can't see how it will all work out.

I find myself filled with fear.  I was greatly encouraged by a blog post from Elizabeth Curry.  While she was blogging about fear related to parenting an adopted child, the feelings I'm having are very similar.  And the solution is to trust God.  Not to just trust him a little, but to trust him FULLY.  I believe the true faith-filled response would be to have no worry and to continue on knowing that he will guide your steps and make your paths straight.

Wow - is that hard.

And I fail at it nearly every day - even though I can think of numerous examples in my own life where God has been present.  Plus, I can find an infinite numbers of examples in other's lives where God was present.

I hear my mother's voice, "What's the worst thing that can happen?"  Um, we could be homeless?  Not really.  We could lose a lot of money?  Happened before, never looked back.  We could struggle with relying on God?  Yep.  And we need that struggle to rely on him more fully than before.

Amen to that!

On another note:  Why is my realtor calling my house a "Pottery Barn Gem?"

You decide.

Letting things go - specifically our piano

We have moved a lot.

8 times in all.  And I purge a lot.  So, we don't have a lot of things that have stuck with us.

But, this one has.

It's a beautiful piano.  Built in 1910 and made to last.  The style is completely us - clean lines, no frills.  I picked out this piano from a shop in Fort Collins, Colorado right before we moved into our new, large-enough-for-a-piano house.  I greeted it with visions of kids someday, kids who would first bang and then actually play the keys.

When we moved out to Chicago, the piano stayed behind.  A friend agreed to keep it for us at their house.  I still think they were pretty surprised when, 3.5 years later, we asked to take it back and we moved it to Chicago.

I was so thankful to have it - it is huge, heavy and loud but you could just as easily say it's grandiose, substantial and vociferous.  This year our 9 yr old, Claire, decided to start lessons.  It's been amazing to hear her play daily.  

But, as we prepare to move back to Colorado, we decided to not bring it with us.

This has been hard for me and for Claire. But we must say farewell.  On to new adventures without the weight of a 100 yr old piano.

 On a separate note, the cats' puffer balls have all been found.

So long to the old pine....

We had this huge white pine right in front of our house.  It was not only unpleasant to look at, it also made a huge mess on the roof, ground and cars.  It was impossible to grow anything around it and I was always afraid one of the trunks would break off and land on our family room.  So, we saved up for a few years and then finally had it removed.

The BEFORE!

Pulling it down.

The AFTER!

How do you say goodbye?

I am trying to figure out how to process the events of the last few weeks.  In some ways they were planned out long in advance and in other ways they seemed to appear suddenly.  Matt accepted a job in Colorado so we find ourselves putting our house on the market, finishing out summer camps quickly and planning to move there in just a few short months.

We came to live in Chicago when Anna was 2 and Claire was just 4 months old.  We uprooted from suburban life and settled ourselves into a busy, crazy city.  We sometimes lived on ramen noodles and canned carrots, but we were just so happy.  Happy to be on our own, away from our home state for the first time and excited for whatever the future held.  Matt was just starting his graduate degree in Philosophy and all doors seemed open wide.

Fast forward several years to the surprise pregnancy that would become Katherine.  This took us a bit off guard and we decided to head back "home" to Colorado and try to sort out our new life as a family of 5.  It became obvious pretty quickly that Matt wouldn't be able to finish his degree and establish his new consulting business.  So, we found ourselves back in Chicagoland - this time we settled in our favorite, close to Chicago suburb.

Our home in Evanston was beautiful and the neighborhood was almost too perfect to believe.  Our littlest one learned to walk just a few months after we moved in and we felt it was a perfect place to be. A couple of years later things changed dramatically and we ended up deciding to buy our first home since Anna was a baby.

When we arrived in Glenview back in 2011, we hoped and prayed for good neighbors and a quick adjustment.  Wow, were we surprised!  This home has felt the most "home" to me so far, the neighbors have been truly family and being so close to our church we have put down deep roots there - helping out weekly and hosting several different groups at our home.

We will be leaving close friends - friends who would drop everything to help out, friends whom our kids play with every single day.  Friends who have shared hurts and their hearts with us.  While we leave with anticipation of being close enough to see our family more than once a year, we also leave knowing it will be harder to keep in touch with those here.

During this time of transition we are thankful for:
1.  God's clear direction
2.  Our kid's resilience and adaptability
3.  Encouragement
4.  Each other
5.  Family