Here Comes the Sun....

I decided to use this cheery Beatles song as a mask to hide the true emotions of this post...

For documentation and historical record, and since most of my posts in the next month will revolve around it I wanted to blog about the fact that in less than a month, I will be leaving my favorite city in America, and moving to sunny, warm, and really far away Florida.

I know many people think, ohhh, awesome, warm weather and Mickey! And I think no fall/cider donuts, and most importantly, the many people that have made this place the most amazing home for the last three years.

Mark is starting a new job-which is the really exciting part. He is thrilled, so obviously we are, too! It will be exciting to have him doing something he enjoys and also getting to be home more. Also exciting, is that my brother and his family-and also my parents live in the same town-so we will be going to people who love us. Another bit of trivia is that Mark and I actually "met" in Orlando...we had met prior to that, but he totally fell in love with me at a wedding there. :) (Our dear friends, The Johnsons, whose wedding it was are luckily still there and say they will claim us, also. Whew.)

The sad part is that when we first moved to GR Mark and I joked that I should stand in front of Meijer with a sandwich board saying I was looking for friends because I didn't really have any. God has blessed me so far beyond measure, and now I'm in physical pain to be leaving our dear Detroit/Chicago friends, Mark's awesome local family-aunts and uncles and grandparents, my MOPS group and steering buddies, my lunch bunch, my play group, my book club, my girlfriends, my nights out, and the worst, which I can barely type, is my sister and best friend. Three houses away, we have shared pantries, kids, dogs, extension cords, battery chargers, and millions of phone calls and texts even though we are so close. I love getting home at night and looking over to see her kitchen light on. Or being at her house and seeing that my house is on fire. But that was a different post. :)

I will close with this quote from Shauna Niequists's latest book. She speaks much more eloquently than I. And since I'm pretty much always about 2 inches from crying, it's nice to have someone else do the talking.

'This is what I've come to believe about change: it's good, in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good. By that I mean that it's incredibly painful, exponentially more so if you fight it, and also that it has the potential to open you up, to open life up, to deliver you right into the palm of God's hand, which is where you wanted to be all long, except that you were too busy pushing and pulling your life into exactly what you thought it should be. 'I've learned the hard way that change is one of God's greatest gifts, and most useful tools. Change can push us, pull us, rebuke and remake us. It can show us who we've become, in the worst ways, and also in the best ways. I've learned that it's not something to run away from, as though we could, and that in many cases, change is a function of God's graciousness, not life's cruelty.'

Come visit! I hear it's warm.