"For it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will never leave you or forsake you."

I have meant to write on here for a long time, but to be honest I didn't care to.  It has been a rough year in many ways.  But thankfully at the same time it has been a wonderful year.  God has provided and taken care of us.  We built and moved into a new house that I LOVE.  We welcomed Emery into our family and just a few months ago celebrated her first birthday.  Elias and Adeline have also recently turned 3 and 5.  All three kids are so different and special in there own way.   Yes, it has been hard, but God has shown his face evidently when I cried out to him in desperation. Praying that he would help me to know he was near when I felt so alone.  I feel like a nomad.  Todd and I have been married 9 years and lived in 6 homes.  Elias and Adeline have lived in three houses and in Emery's first year has already lived in two.  And I know our moving saga isn't over.. at least I hope.  ;) 

Let's go back to a little over 2 years ago when we moved from Indy to Southern Indiana.  At the time it seemed like such a blessing (and it really was) and we were excited to move to a slower placed life in a rural community.  But, here is where things went different then what I had planned.  You have to realize for 28 years I have lived in Indy (besides a few years in college).  I am a very social person.  I have always surrounded myself with people and always out and about.  I loved living life with my friends and dating Todd for 5+ years doing fun things around Indy.  While I lived at my parents during middle school and high school I spent most weekends and even many evenings not not at home.  I was out with friends and the love of my life.  I was very active in the youth group at my church and we all hung out regularly.  After we got married I got a job at a new church where we made many new friends.  We even became leaders of the newly married/married couples with young children class and led a bible study.  Within this group of new friends we were in essence living life together.  We were all having kids and hanging out as families.  We even had several neighbor families that we talked to on daily while the kids played outside.  With all of that history.  It was my expectation that when we moved to Southern Indiana we would get involved in a wonderful church and make lots of new friends.  Be a in a bible study with young families just like us.  We would live life with them.  They would be dear friends to us.  We would love it.  Our kids would have lots of new friends.  Yes, I was VERY sad to leave our family and friends and the city, but we knew at the time we had to move...

Well, fast forward 2 years.  I have said this many times this past year.  If I could have looked into the future and known when Todd was offered this job how hard this move was going to be on us I would have done ANYTHING to stay in Indy and not have moved.  But, obviously we cannot change the past and what has happened has happened.  It was for some reason!?!?  The first year we moved here I got involved in everything I could to try and meet new friends.  The kids and I joined a play group, I went to Le Leche meetings, story time, and even I took the kids to home school coop classes one day a week.  We were involved in our new church.  The first months here it was exciting.  Everything was new.  Then after about 6 months to a year.  I realized we were not making connections or friends.  Just acquaintances.  From my point of view most people here just hang out with there family.  They all live on the same land next to each other.  Everyone that lives here has grown up here.  They already have cliques and friends.  No one reached out to us because frankly no one like us just moves here.  I was very alone and our poor kids would go DAYS without seeing other kids.  It made my heart ache so badly.  I have never in my life felt so alone.  I had always been surrounded by friends and things to do.  I wanted to be with our old friends.  I wanted our family.  So, after not making connections after trying so hard for a year I sadly gave up.  So, last year... the 2nd year here.  I was extremely alone.  You really begin to feel sorry for yourself when you go to the park, library, or store mainly just to see if you would by chance run into another mom with little kids and then just so happen to bump into them and ask if they would be our friend.  If they would hang out with us.  This happened on many occasions.  Even when I was out driving I would look to see if I saw young moms driving little kids around.  But, sadly I felt as if there was no one my age here.  No one with kids the same age.  Where was everybody?  Was there even anyone our age here?  And I am not even talking exact age.  I would gladly have made friends with plus or minus 10+ years of me.  ;)  It wasn't that I wasn't making friends with people I met, but there just wasn't anyone I could find to even attempt to make friends with.  I could count on one hand after living here a year of people I knew that were similar to my age with little kids.  Todd didn't have friends and never hung out with guys, but he was so busy with work and then coming home to us he didn't care. 

So, this past spring and summer Todd applied to jobs back in the Indy area and also in Washington County because a superintendent called and asked him to interview to be the principal.  He turned down that position mainly because it was early spring and we wanted to keep the door open to not lose an opportunity to move back to Indy.....which we both felt was most important to us.  It was a great position and opportunity and in many ways hard to turn down.  We didn't want to move our family again unless it was back to Indy.  I felt like we were being obedient to God's direction and he would bless us with something better for being obedient.  This spring and summer Todd interviewed at 3 or 4 positions in the Indy area in places that felt so perfect.  Places where I want to move back to.   I hoped God was allowing Todd to get interviews because he was going to land him straight to the perfect job and allow us to leave this "dark" place and come HOME!  As the summer went along and he was turned down for jobs I was a little sad, but I just knew that God had a bigger and better plan.  Something else would open up before August.  Going through the interview process was very hard.  Because when he would have interviews it was hard to not invest my thoughts and hopes into it.  Because if he got the job we would very quickly be putting our house up for sale here and moving back to Indy.  After a couple interviews I even cried out to God.  Please don't give Todd another interview if he isn't going to get the job...unless there is a greater purpose because of it.  The reason is because each possibility would get my hopes up and then be shot down and then go through the emotional roller coaster all over again.  Several times throughout the summer I would even be at peace and content with living here and ready to embrace another year.  But, just as I got peace he would get another call for an interview and bring my hopes up again.  This could be it.  Sometimes it just takes being at peace at content for God to move.  Even just a few weeks ago Todd got yet another interview at a place that seemed as perfect as possibly could be.  School was starting here literally just two weeks later.  So, I felt this was our last shot at a job to move back and if it didn't work we would be here another year.  (If someone reads this from Paoli.  I want you to know that Todd LOVES his job here. He was only applying for other jobs because he wanted to keep the door open if it was God's desire to bring us back to Indy near our family).

Well obviously it didn't work out.  I was absolutely crushed.  I grieved.  I was so mad at God for a few hours.  Why?  Why are we having to go through this?  What is my purpose here?  Why can't we be by our family and friends we miss so much?  Our family even wants us back.  Why?  I am so alone here.  I have no friends and neither do my kids.  How am I going to make it another year being so alone....and who knows maybe many more years that I will be stuck here..

After some of the hardest grief I have ever gone through in my life.  I knew that I couldn't continue to be so sad and just long each day to not be here and miss my old life.  In my despair I cried out to God.   Lord, if I have to live here please show me your purpose for me here.  Please help me to feel your presence in my life in very real ways.  I need to know you have not forsaken me.  If I have to live here please help the kids and I to connect and find friends.  Help us to get through another year or years here.  Help me to see the bigger picture.  Help me to have joy.  Help me to embrace this life here.  Help me to be happy here.  I said this prayer over and over again.

And here I am now at this moment.  And why should I be surprised, but God has shown very evidently that he is near and still continuing to take care of us.  I can see now how he probably protected us by keeping us here for the time being.  and get this.  no joke.  Through several circumstances over the last few weeks we have joined a bible study through another church.  Some of the families have kids the same age.  The kids play while the adults have the study.  I have been invited to not one, but TWO bible studies for moms with similar aged kids during the week.  We meet during the day and the kids again play while we fellowship.  And that is not it.  We have even joined other homeschooling moms (and yes I am homeschooling Elias for kindergarten-that is a whole other story) during the week to do a science lesson at different homes and then the kids all play after the short lesson. AND... last week and this week we even had different people come over to play and hangout.  Since I said this prayer we have literally done something with another family practically every day during the last two weeks.  It was JUST what I needed.  It is sweet blessings straight from God.  It is only through him.  It has lifted my spirits.  I was practically in tears several times as I have watched my kids finally interacting with other kids.  They have had so much fun.  They are so happy to be around other kids and it fills my empty heart back up. 

There is so much more that I could share, but to sum it up I am so thankful to have hope, joy, and peace again about living here when for quite some time I did not. 

For anyone that has never moved away from where they have grown up.....and especially to a very rural community you have no idea..  haha.  It just makes me laugh to how sheltered I was.  It is truly such a different life here in so many ways and it is almost like I am in a foreign country at times.  And I am being completely serious. 


Get this... I live amongst the Amish.  I live in the 2nd poorest county in the state, with the first just the county over.  I can guarantee most people reading this have never driven to places that are so far out in the middle of nowhere like I do on a regular basis.  I have never seen so many beat up trailers in my life.  I have to ask myself... people really live in that?  :(  I even noticed the other day that I slipped a very improper English phrase out.  Because half of the people talk like this...  I seen that.  I does that to today.  I got me a drink. and so on...  A lot of people don't have teeth.  People are used to having nothing and very content with it.  There is absolutely no traffic ever.  Driving amongst very hilly and windy gravely roads is the norm.  Most of our friends live on dozens of acres in farm houses or cabins surrounded by clothes lines full of freshly put up clothes.  Chickens running around.  For wheelers to drive.  kids running around through all the fields and woods chasing each other while shooting each other with guns.  oh and wearing davey crocket racoon tail hats while doing it.  Yes my kids do this.  Sometimes I feel like I am apart of the show little house on the prairie.  I have to pinch myself because it seems like a dream.  Truck after Truck on the roads.  Even most of the ladies here drive trucks.  Lots of chewing tobacco good ole' boys.  This is my life now.  I must embrace it.  The list could go on.  It is truly a site to see here.  I have culture shock still after living here for two years.  The craziest part is that my kids don't know any different.  They hardly remember life in Indy.  They are growing up the country life.  Which in a lot of ways I am so happy that they are.  I love that they run wild in the absolutely beautiful nature daily.  It is absolute picturesque here.  I need to start taking pictures of it for those that have not been here to see it.  Sometimes I feel like I am driving around gatlinburg on vacation.  (I want to make sure that even though I am stating these things it doesn't mean I they are "bad.".  It is just not what I am used to.  It has opened my eyes to a much bigger state and world.  In different parts people live very different lives.  and that is okay.  I am thankful to know this side because it has changed me and my perspective on life).

These past two years while living here God is stretching me and I am growing in ways I could have never imagined.  I am a MUCH stronger person.  My eyes have opened to so many new things.  I am thankful for grace because of the the pity party I gave myself last year.  Granted always the first year after having a baby is always more blue and we are home more and that did not help the situation.  I am moving to the brighter more optimistic side.  Yes, I still grieve and am homesick at times and will probably be as long as I live here....but I am at a better place.  The kids have felt all of these emotions too.  The kids talk very often about moving by Mimi and papaw and grandma and Papa and mention friends we left there.  They say when daddy gets a new job we can move back.  Elias will even randomly cry like just a few days ago about wanting to move back.  It is the lip quiver trying to hold back tears kind of sad....and then burst into tears.  It breaks my heart!  and I have to tell him while holding back my own tears that God has bigger plans then we can understand.  We just have to be happy and have joy while we are here.  I have hope we will someday move back.  I can honestly say I am thankful (which is not easy).  We are changed in a very positive way because of moving here and the experiences we are going through. 

In closing.  If you know anyone that is new to the area (or an outcast) where you live.  I really encourage you to embrace them.  Invite them into your home.  Help them get involved.  Be there friend.  It will be the best gift you can ever give to them.  They need you and you probably need them.  I vow to always minister to those people the rest of my life.  Because it is a hard road.  A friend posted this on her facebook today and I thought it was so fitting. 

"God's will is what we would choose if we knew what God knows." -Nancy Leigh DeMoss