the beginning

Last week we got home from traveling to and within New Zealand.  I talked a bit about the travel itself, but not the actual trip.

We are moving there.

I am starting to process this.

There is a lot that leads up to the decision to move your family across the world.  Clint has done this once on his own (though he says it feels very different now moving a family) and my parents did this while we were growing up, but only for a short time (9 months).

After months of praying, talking, emails, Google searches, here we are.  Now it's us and the time is indefinite.  And I continue to process what this means.

While visiting a place I'd never been I tried to take it all in.  Jet-lagged and soberly I thought about what this would look like for our family.

I walked streets I'd never walked before but will walk many times more.
I thought about neighborhoods and buildings that we might want to live in.
I wondered who my friends would be and if it would be hard to find them.
I drank at coffee shops and pictured my mom and I sitting there chatting when she visits.

Sometimes I wonder why we would move to a place we've never been, to people we are just getting to know, miles and miles from family and friends, to create something we've only imagined.

And yet...
Peace.
There is peace.  Little by little we sense it.  It is nothing big, emotional, or any creation of our own.  But we trust it.  We trust that the One who has called us is faithful.

I am only starting to process, think, imagine.  But this is not new to Him.

I cannot fathom what the next year will look like as we prepare, dream, pursue.  And I cannot begin to think of all the details that need to be walked through.  It is overwhelming and exciting, all at once.

In awe and with anticipation,
Here we go...