down a sunny dirt road...

You know the familiar beginning "Down a sunny dirt road deep in bear country lived the Bernstain Bears..." That is what I feel like when I pull into the lane of our new house. It is down a long dirt lane deep in the river hills of Conestoga. It is only ten minutes from our current home yet it feels like a different world in some ways. 

In less than six weeks we are moving. I am excited and overwhelmed all together. I find myself on one hand daydreaming about furniture arrangements and decorating and on the other hand grieving the transition. I know packing is God's way of helping me transition. So I have already started to pack and sort our lives into boxes and piles. This is our ninth move in ten years and I am getting good at this but it can still be difficult. 

Some days I feel like another story book character, the mouse in "if you give a mouse a cookie". I will start packing and go downstairs and realize I never cleaned up breakfast and then someone will need me upstairs and find I never finished packing and then Eden will wake up and...you get the point. I feel pulled in so many directions. And I feel distracted in my parenting as we have been preparing for this move and trying to get everything figured out. I hate feeling distracted like I am not giving my all and best to anything that I am doing. 

But this is a season. This shall pass. In a few weeks we will be packed up and moved into our little farmhouse down a sunny dirt lane and it will be okay. God is providing grace for the transition.

As I was packing yesterday I came across some old journals and started to leaf through them. I found myself laughing at some parts and crying at others. It was cool to see God's fingerprints on my life as I looked back in retrospect. There was an entry I had written a few months after we got married. I was already pregnant with Moses and we had gone to a conference where we had a prophecy time during which a couple strangers pray for you and share what God gives them. I had written down the prophetic words that were given to us, a newlywed couple at the time living in our first house next to my parents. These were the words that were spoken over me, 

"God is redefining your sense of home. He is home. Home is in the Lord. You are trying to figure out where home is but where I AM is, is home."

" You have been given homemaking abilities and God is going to bless you in that and you are going to impart that to to others."

"I see you moving. The Lord has you and you have the Lord. Do not be afraid of the location. The location is not important. There will be several moves. Not just settled in one place. Is is important to move with the Lord as your home."

Wow. How right on is that, ten years and nine moves later. What confirmation that we are right on track and that the Lord is our HOME.

So the Lord is moving with us. His pen is writing the story of our lives. I can embrace the change knowing He is pouring out grace. And not only that but this house down the dirt lane in Conestoga was part of His plan all along.