Pieces that FIT!

What a great opportunity to sit and reflect on all that God has done in our lives. Ordinarily I would preface that with a time frame, especially being that in the past month we've seen God at work in really big ways, but it has occurred to me and Eric multiple times that the movement we've seen recently really began a long time ago. As far back as the beginning of college... for both of us, which, if you know us, you know that there are 7 years between us. Never did our college years collide. However, we can both look back and link many of the things that are continuing to happen now to the time that we were in college (respectively).

For Eric, he began his college days at Bowling Green State in OH back in '89/'90, graduating in 1994 after studying abroad in Japan for a year. His studies in Japan and his knowledge of the language and culture landed him his first job out of college in Lafayette, IN at Subaru.

It's easy to see why God led him here... ME! Just kidding, although not entirely! Eric's spiritual journey is a true testimony to God's passionate pursuant of His children. The short of it is that Eric finally realized and took ownership of his faith while at BG going to a Great Commission Ministries church. Getting transplanted to begin his first job in Lafayette led him to seek out the GCM church at Purdue Univ.

For me, my journey through college was not nearly as traditional. I spent the first year out of high school at Johnson Bible College in Knoxville, TN. I went all alone, no friends tagged along. God was so good when he blessed me with my first roommate, Kristen Henkle. You'll read more about her later. While at JBC, I developed tremendous friendships and grew in many ways. The thing that was lacking for me was the true college experience. When I look back, my decision to leave was both for academic purposes and social purposes. I will say the later was a poor reason to leave an amazing environment. But leave I did. Back to Purdue where I goofed around and pretended to study along the way. After a year, I took a semester off and then chose a small, private nursing school where I finally got serious about being an adult. During that time, I also got serious about my relationship with God. Through circumstances truly divine, I began attending the GCM church at Purdue called Grace Campus church.

You can easily see the connection that I'm about to make. Here are a few sidenotes worth noting however. During my time at Purdue, my two most steadfast friends from JBC were Kristen and a guy named Patrick... they ended up married!!! In the time that Eric was at GCM long before I was ever around, he developed a friendship with Todd, who, as the story goes, Eric's mom thanked for being friends with Eric. Todd was the person who, with all his personality, truly befriended Eric from the start.

Eric and I met, fell in love and married all within a few years. After a year or so of marriage, it became clear that Eric just wasn't happy at work. He began pursuing his MBA at Purdue and that was a time that opened many doors and caused Eric to realize that there's a lot more out there than this. So he began the job search, landing us in the Chicago Suburbs. All the while, we had our son and had our daughter on the way. And of course promptly one year after her, came our third and final baby!

Ah the burbs! This was a great carreer move for Eric and a real character and faith builder for all of us. I was tested to my core on what seemed like all levels. As a real extaverted person, I was really lacking for friendships. We were challenged in our beliefs and our concept of the institution of church. Our marriage was tested and grown as we added children to our family and found ourselves in a rather small living space and the reality of HAVING to live by a budget. All good things I will admit. The children especially. Our three kids have added to our lives in ways unimaginable. Yea God! But the suburbs was not the ideal place for us. Neither of us really wanted to raise our family there forever, but we were prepared to do so if God had that in store.

There was a particular weekend that we had gone to Fort Wayne to visit our friends Todd and his family as well as Kristen and her family. I now mark that as a life changing weekend because of the inspiration that I was left with. When I returned home, I picked up my Beth Moore book "Believing God" and began to read and accept the challenges therein. And I began to pray for God to move in a very specific area of our lives. I was actually asking God to move us. I was desperate to be surrounded by people who loved me and spurred me on in my faith. And not just me, but my whole family. Finally, my motive was completely God centered. I was and am certain that we are more effective for God's Kingdom when we are in like company.

In her book, Beth challenges us to set a time that we would pray specifically and to then see and record the activity that we see God doing. And I kid you not, it was within weeks that Eric was made aware of the open position in Fort wayne with the same company. Of course my immediate response was an awesome wonder of an awesome God. In life, there are very few moments where God shows up so clear. The short of that piece of the puzzle is that Eric posted for the position, interviewed for it and then accepted an incredible offer to relocate.

Though that's the short of it, there are smaller pieces that fit in there that make the evidence of God clearer than the light of day. If it weren't enough that two of our dearest friends both in life and in faith were Fort Wayne locals, Eric, during his interview learned that his new boss was also a Bowling Green graduate. And what's more is that she is a Christ follower. I don't know a single Christian who is serious about their faith that wouldn't love to be in an environment where it's okay to talk about it. What a blessing and further evidence of God moving us in this direction.

Many more pieces seem to fit perfectly into this puzzle that was being revealed before us. And I am convinced that if we had resisted this move, God would have quite literally picked us up and moved us himself. In many ways, it feels like that's what happened. Life is good when we are embraced by the Spirit, but even better when it's so obvious that the pieces are fitting correctly.

Home???

Getting from here to there is turning out to be one of the harder parts of this transition. There was no question in my mind that showing and selling the house was going to be difficult to do with just me and the kids at home during the day. But when it really happened it was at least as hard as I thought it would be. I was hoping that it'd be easier than I thought, you know like when you build something up in your head as being really hard or really bad and then the reality of the matter is that it wasn't so bad... probably cause you thought it was going to be SO bad? Well, not in this case. If you can imagine, I had to move all the toys out of the house. By that I mean that each day I'd bring in a plastic tub of toys from the garage for the kids to play with. We had no shoes in the house, plastic on our newly cleaned carpet, no snacks anywhere but the table and a mother constantly hollering "No." It was not fun, not for me or for the kids, especially the kids I'm sure! But God is faithful isn't He.

We spent the first weekend that we could in Fort Wayne searching for a house. That was the first weekend in June. We were placed with an outstanding realtor who knew the Fort Wayne area very well. We had a number of homes on our list that we wanted to see, 10 to be exact. Going from one to another was very tiring and I must say, I have a new respect for realtors that are good. We saw some that we liked and some that we could easily scratch off the list. Our realtor recommended that we narrow it down to three and see them each again.

In hind site I recognize that I was more focused on seeing the one house that I wanted to see that I had put myself at a disadvantage for seeing the others. There was a home that I had seen online that I had my heart set on and it was the second to last home that we saw. Thankfully, God gave Eric the right eyes to see each house. In this way, Eric showed true leadership of our family by choosing a house for the top three that made no impression on me initially (mainly because I was more interested in seeing the one than I was in looking at all the rest. I was praying that the one I'd seen on line wouldn't let me down in person, but in hind site, I can honestly say that it really did. At the end of the day, the house that made the impression on Eric and not on me initially is the one we bought. I give total glory to God for that because had it not been for Eric's thoughtful eye, we never would have this perfect house for us. I have since fallen in love with the house. In fact, it only took one more visit to the house to look for me to fall for it.

Still, I had the stress of how I would handle the upcoming days and weeks as we tried to sell our house. Here again another piece to this never ending puzzle has fit perfectly together. As suggested by my mom and dad at the time that we were house hunting (they joined us in Fort Wayne mainly for child care purposes) I come to you by way of my brother's computer here in my home town. It worked out that my brother is away coaching for the season and as soon as school was out, Katie and the girls joined him, leaving their house empty. They were gracious enough to let me and the kids come stay here while they were gone and we were in limbo. We are very grateful. So, until we sell our house and/or we close on our new house, this will be our home. So far, the kids love it. Though we've only been here 24 hours. It does work out nicely cause there are plenty of toys for the kids. Andrew is getting in touch with his feminine side and the girls love all the girly toys. The neighbors are nice and we are close to family and friends. All around a great deal, although we do miss Eric and aweful lot already!

We are praying that we will have some more activity and lookers at our house and that we are able to move the closing date of our new house up so that we can make the final step in this transition and finally be HOME!!!