The Last 2 Years

The last two years have been full of transition for us. Two years ago in the span of about a month we got married, bought a house, moved to a new city and in some respects started a new job....whoa! I think they say there are 7 stressors they have identified and we went through 4 of them in a month. It was crazy to say the least...or maybe I should say I was crazy!

Right after we got married we moved to West Lafayette, IN to continue to work with Campus Outreach at Purdue University (I had been on staff at Murray State University in Kentucky for several years and Heath had worked on staff at IUPUI in Indianapolis for a couple of years). For me, the transition was soooo hard. I loved the girls I was working with at Murray, I loved my staff team, I loved living 2-3 hours from all my family and friends, I even loved living in little ole Murray, KY. Now, I was no longer with my girls I loved, I didn't really know anyone on my new staff team, I lived at least 7 hours away from all my friends and family and I didn't even know how to get to the store in West Lafayette. But even that part of the journey was beautiful. I learned in that part of my journey that Jesus is the same no matter where I live, how far away my friends and family are, what job I'm doing and whether I knew how to get to the store or not. Hebrews 13:8 says "He is the same yesterday, today and forever." How simple, but oh was it such a good promise for me to cling to. The same God I worshiped in Murray, KY is the same God I worship in West Lafayette, IN. The same God I worshipped when I lived close to my family is the same God I worship when I live far away. Even when my circumstances change, my God does not. I'm so grateful for that truth.

Fast forward a year and half. Heath had made a 4 year commitment to work for Campus Outreach (CO) when he started. We were coming up on the end of his 3rd year and knew we had one more year committed to CO. However, something wasn't right-there was a little bit of a disconnect in our hearts. Circumstantially, everything was great-people were coming to Christ, our support was great (thanks to our supporters who made that possible!), we were discipling college students, etc. So what was going on? We were encouraged by CO leadership to ask God what He was wanting from us. As we prayed and asked God to show us what He was up to, we saw that He was leading us off of staff. Heath put it best when he said "Our heart for college students hasn't changed, it's just our heart for other things has grown." And that was exactly it. (Let me be clear that we L-O-V-E-D our time on staff with CO and are so grateful for our time spent on staff) So now we were going off of staff a year before we planned and what were we going to do? Because of the transition mentioned above about moving to West Lafayette, Heath  had pretty much promised when we went off staff we would move back South...yay! But God had done something beautiful in that short 2 year time period...we had fallen in love with West Lafayette (if you talked to me at all in my first year here you would know how much of a work of God that was!!) God had placed us in a church we were absolutely in love with and had given us friends here that have been rich and sweet. Believe it or not, I asked Heath if we could stay! So stay we did.

What now? Heath took a job at Enterprise-rent-a-car here in Lafayette and I babysit an adorable 3 year old 2 days a week as well as his brother and sister when they get home from school. We still love our church and our friendships are getting richer and sweeter as the time goes by.

 The last 2 years in no way have been easy, in fact they have been hard and super confusing at times, but  God has been with us every step of the way. He is the one leading and guiding this beautiful journey we are on!