Columbus here we come!

Let me start off by saying we L-O-V-E living in West Lafayette. Actually, I don't know the word love does it justice. God has been so sweet to us there. We love our friends, love our church and love our neighbors. All that to say, moving to Columbus was not on our agenda, but it was clearly on God's.

I will start from the beginning. Over Thanksgiving break Heath's dad (his parents live in Columbus) approached us about the idea of moving to Columbus to work with Mariah Foods. His dad is the VP of Sales and they were wanting to get some younger people in there. Heath said we would think about it. My initial reaction: thanks but no thanks. I was not interested in moving. I loved everything about where we were and felt like we were finally settled. Heath was interested in the job and as far as getting experience and training it was by far the best opportunity he could ever hope for. We knew we had some time because we couldn't sell our house until the end of May because of some tax reasons.

About the same time, Heath started wondering if his current job was something he really wanted to do long term. As the weeks went by it became more and more apparent that it wasn't the right fit for him. We are so thankful he had that job and can see how God used it and are beyond thankful that he even had a job, we just knew it was time for a change. God started to do some really interesting things. All of a sudden all these jobs started popping up-he wasn't actively looking, they just kept coming up, people were asking him to interview. We were thrilled and just prayed God would open up the right door and close all the other ones. We pretty much told his dad we weren't interested in the job in Columbus and would probably take one of the ones in Lafayette because that's where we wanted to stay.

Wouldn't you know that not only did God not open the doors for any of the jobs in Lafayette, he slammed the doors shut and continued to open the doors for Columbus. My reaction: thanks but no thanks. I seriously was not at all interested in moving there-other than the fact that it put us closer (okay so we're living in their houses close) to his parents and it would put me 2 hours closer to my family (which would make a weekend trip doable-yay!)

Heath continued to interview with different companies in Lafayette and God just kept shutting the doors. So in the beginning of April we realized that it wasn't good for him to be at his job for much longer (lots of stress, long hours, he didn't love it) and we needed to make a move. I kept telling Heath he needed to actively be searching for something and his response was something to the effect of "why would I look for the exact same job I've been offered in Columbus-which is what I want to be doing-knowing that I will never be able to find it because I really don't have the experience." Well said, Heath, well said.

 And that was all it took for me to get on board. I didn't want to move to Columbus and I still like to think it's not real-kind of like we are just taking a little break and we will be back to life as we knew it in no time. But here's the thing, Heath provides for me in a way that allows me to be home (which I am especially looking forward to when Baby Racine joins us-hopefully sometime soon), so I want him to love what he's doing. It is a small sacrifice to me to uproot my life so that he can love his job. I'm in no way saying that it's easy for me to uproot my life and there have already been and will continue to be challenges that come along with it, but it is a way I can serve him. And you know what? He loves his job. He is like a whole new person.

So here we are in Columbus, IN, living back and forth between his mom's and his dad's and trying to figure out what the Lord has for us here. It was so clearly Him moving us here. I have all kinds of questions-where will we go to church, will I have friends like I did in West Lafayette, in what ways can I minister to people, how long before our house sells and we can buy a new one, where is the ______(fill in the blank because I don't know where anything is!!) and so on and so on. But when we moved to West Lafayette I had many of the same questions and I didn't really want to live there, but God did it. He gave me some of my best friends,  He gave us an unbelievable church and you know what? He'll do it again.

The past two years have been full of unexpected faith steps, but we will keep taking them all along this beautiful journey!