Weekend Rendezvous

I'm excited for the weekend to be here! We're driving up to Madison to spend the weekend so we can all get a feel for the city we'll be moving to in a few months.

We'll be checking out a few different neighborhoods to get more of a feel for where we might want to live, as well as we'll visit the UW campus.
I'm super excited to finally get to visit Madison! I've heard so many great things about the city and I'm sure we'll love it there, but there's a little piece of me that's scared that I might completely hate the city. From what I've heard about the city I don't think that's likely, but it's still a little fear I've had in the back of my head, so I'm excited we get to visit this weekend and hopefully put that fear to rest!

It will also be nice to get away with friends for the weekend too. We've been so overwhelmed with getting our house ready to sell that we haven't really had much time for enjoying life, so a weekend away is just what we need to get refreshed. Hopefully we'll fall totally in love with Madison and be filled with motivation to get our house ready!

So much to do, so little time!

Last night Christina came over to help me compile a list of everything we need to do in our house to get it ready to put on the market and I am suddenly feeling so overwhelmed!
This morning when I typed up everything we still need to do it ended up being a 4 page long to-do list! I'm just not sure how everything is going to get done!

Luckily for us we are so blessed to have a lot of wonderful friends who have volunteered (more like pushed themselves on us without us even asking for help) to help us with a lot of stuff.
We'll be out of town both this weekend and next weekend and Christina has already organized a group of people to come pick up stuff at our house and deliver it to Goodwill while we're at work on Wednesday and then next weekend while we're out of town a group of our friends are going to invade our house and clean, paint and do yard work. It's so nice to know that we have people in our lives that are so willing to help us. I'm not the type of person that likes to ask for help, and sometimes I'm just too independent to even want help, so having it kind of pushed on us is really a good thing for us. At this point we're hoping to get our house on the market by the end of April (at first we were shooting for the end of March).

I will be so happy once this season is over! I'm definitely experiencing one of the disadvantages of home-ownership right now.

Catching your Zzzzz's?

I’ve been realizing more and more that we live in a world where everyone looks out for themselves and only themselves. I guess we’ve created this society that believes if you don’t look out for yourself no one will, but it’s still sad to see what people are willing to do to move up in life. I just can't imagine sacrificing my integrity just so that I could feel more important or make an extra buck.

I heard a statement made on the radio a few months ago that kind of stuck with me. The gentleman I was listening to said “if you ever want to gauge the character of a person ask them how they sleep at night, if they say “pretty good” then you’ll know that they go to bed every night with a clear conscience." I think to an extent that really is true. I love to catch those Z’s, but I know that when I’ve done something I feel bad or guilty about I really do lay awake tossing and turning with guilt and remorse. It really is a great feeling to go to bed at night knowing that despite the kind of world we live in we can still make a choice to live our lives with integrity.

I would rather go to bed at night with a clear conscience then lay awake wondering who I had to run over to get to the top. Maybe being a lazy bum isn’t such a bad thing after all!

Coffee Please!

I sure have been missing my coffee lately. The last time I had a cup of coffee was on February 5th. In case you just don’t get it that’s a long time – especially for me. Although I’ve been loving this new green tea kick I’ve been on I sure have been craving my triple grande, non-fat, 1 equal, extra thick foam latte. I’ve been missing my lattes so much that I actually had a dream last night that I was in Starbucks ordering my favorite beverage. Yep…..it’s official, I’m off my coffee rocker!

It’s been good for me this last month and half to prove to myself that I can go without coffee and not drive everyone else around me crazy while I’m doing it!

All that being said….I think once I start up on the java again (which will be on Saturday), I plan on sticking to just 1 cup a day and then I’ll drink my green tea for the rest of my day. Tea is cheaper in the long run too, so I guess in that way it’s a win-win situation.

For now though I’m just counting the days until Saturday…….

There's no "I" in team

Nathan & Jamers on our trip to Chicago last fall

Big news! Our friends Nathan & Jamie have decided that they will be moving to Madison with us as well and we are THRILLED! We are so excited that we'll have some more friends joining us on this journey!

Today our senior pastor announced to the church the team of people (there are 8 of us total) that will be moving to Madison to plant this new church. It was really odd though because after church we have so many people coming up to us saying "congratulations." I just don't get it....congrats? Really? It's not like we're having a baby or something, we're selling our house and moving to a place where we don't know anyone, don't have any jobs, and pretty much have realized that the only house we can afford is a shack. Congratulations? It's not that I was offended or anything, it just seemed like such a funny word to use given the situation.

All that being said we are very excited for what the future holds for us in Madison. Yes, it is a sacrifice, and we're giving up a lot here in St. Louis, but it is SO worth it. We know that it's going to be hard at first, but once we get established life won't seem so scary anymore. I've only moved across the country twice in my life, but I've learned from experience that it's hard at first but then everything just seems to work out. We feel such a peace in our hearts about the decisions we've made that even all the unknowns just kind of leave us excited to see how God decides to work things out rather than scared about all the "what if's?" .

Chaos...

I’m so glad that Friday is finally here. It’s been a long week. Every day it’s like stepping onto the set of a real life soap opera when I come to work. There is so much drama going on here and if it wasn’t for the fact that I just got a good raise and will probably be quitting sometime in the next 8 months anyway I would probably be looking elsewhere for work.
As far as the job situation goes I’m very nervous to tell my supervisor (who also happens to be a friend) that we’re planning on moving. I’m planning on having a meeting with her on Monday to let her know as she’s been out all week with sick kids. The company just awarded raises and most people people got just a 2% raise and I got a whole 9% (and no, it wasn't may supervisor that's a friend that gave me that generous amount, it was the VP of the company that made that decision) so I feel really blessed. Because of that I feel really bad that I’m essentially saying “thanks for your generosity, it’s especially nice since I won’t be around much longer.” Of course that’s not my heart and how I truly feel, but I’m worried that it will come across that way

We haven’t really told many of our STL friends that we’re leaving yet. In fact, it’s pretty hush-hush news as we haven’t even announced it to our church yet. There’s supposed to be a big announcement during this Sunday’s service, so just a few more days and the cat will be out of the bag. Because we’ve been trying to be sensitive to everyone’s feeling our senior pastor thought we should wait a few weeks to tell the congregation that we would we be moving since everyone’s barely getting over the bombshell that their associate pastors will be moving. Because we’re so relationally tied with Chris & Christina I don’t really think everyone’s going to be completely shocked that we’re going with them (just look at my record with them, I’ve already relocated across the country once with them), but I think there will still be a lot people surprised nonetheless. Luckily for me there’s not really too many St. Louis friends that read my blog, so it’s not like I’m giving a spoiler alert or anything.

Anyway….all that to say I’m ready for the weekend, and even kind of ready for the weekend to be over. Really I’m just ready for this season of complete chaos to be over. I will be so relieved once we finally have our house ready to put on the market. That’s been my main source of stress lately; in a way it’s kind of a blessing in disguise because it keeps my mind off of all this drama that’s going on at work.

At this point all I can really do is just take one day at a time and rely on God’s grace to carry me. As stressed as I am I can only think back to some of the crazier stuff that I’ve walked through in life and remember that God has always taken care of me in the past. That’s what gives me hope for the present and my future as well.

Packing up the crap.....

Here I am, sitting in my nearly empty office and the reality is really starting to hit me......we're moving. Gosh, it sure is scary.
For those of you whom I haven't told we're moving to Madison, WI. I've traveled a lot in my lifetime but I've never once been to the state of Wisconsin. It's crazy moving into the unknown.
The last 2 weeks have been so busy as we've tried to get rid of crap and pack up the stuff we don't need now to put into storage. We're working really hard to get our house ready to put on the market. With the market as rough as it is we need all the help we can get! Assuming all goes well and we sell our house in a timely manner we're planning on being in Madison by July. Please pray that our house sells so we're not still here next year at this time!

Everything has happened so fast....to the news that Chris & Christina were leaving and then the realization that God wanted us to go with them, and now as we prepare to pack up our belongings and sell our cutie little house everything is running in fast forward mode. If someone would have told me a month ago that I would be preparing to move to a city I've never even been to I wouldn't have even believed them. I've been sensing for a long time that we were in a season of change but I never expected that this is what that change would look like.

It's exciting but extremely scary. We're leaving the comforts of good jobs - steve's with GREAT benefits, family, friends, a nice house and an overall comfortable lifestyle. We're moving to a new city where we don't know anyone, don't have any jobs, and we'll probably spend more for a tiny 1 bedroom condo then we did for our nice 3 bedroom house...the future is completely unknown!

In a wordly sense I know it's crazy. The world says that as you age your supposed to move up in life. Every step is supposed to be a step towards great successes, but we feel with such a passion in our hearts that we are called to this city, called to the university students there, called to planting this church and called to the relationships of the friends we'll be going with. Yes, it does seem crazy but one thing I've learned as I've grown closer to Jesus over the years is to never expect that life will be anything but simple when it's submitted completely to Jesus.

I would be a liar to say that I'm not overwhelmed and scared, but daily I make the choice to live in faith rather than fear!