And so we go...

For years I documented our home and life on my old blog, Mandy's Mark. It was a great way to update everyone on our babies and home, but since time is fleeting, I ended up resorting to simply updating my Instagram rather than updating the blog.

However, with the new changes taking us out of state in March, I thought it may help to create a new blog for a new era... Hopefully it'll help everyone feel up to date on the happenings and help us all to feel a bit more connected despite the distance... Fingers crossed!

Now onto the important things such as addressing some of the circumstances surrounding this move to Colorado...

My heart somewhat hurts, but I'm thrilled to see God's continued faithfulness on this journey. We've seen His hand so evidently that we can't help but be confident that His spirit is leading us West. And truthfully, for the first time in my life, I feel content to say that I just want to be under the umbrella of God's will despite how uncomfortable it may be to arrive or stay there.

Honestly, Colorado was a place that we vowed we would never move. We joked about it since we are SO NOT OUTDOORSY, and if we were going to move out of state, we always remained adamant that we would go somewhere warm year 'round. For the past year we have known that most likely, if an opportunity for promotion presented itself, it would take us out of state. We pictured ourselves moving south, and absolutely never West. However, one fateful night in September changed that...

Kris and I were standing in the kitchen while I was preparing dinner when he got a call that the hiring manager was inquiring about whether or not Kris would be interested in the Northwest/Rocky Mountain region for his company. He started repeating "Colorado? Uh, let me talk to Mandy." Meanwhile, I began mouthing "NO. No. NO." I may or may not have thrown up after that initial call because I have anxiety that that was a super unexpected location, and much further from "home" than we would prefer... somewhere that we always stated we WOULDN'T go... He got off the phone and we popped open a bottle of wine and chatted all evening. All night and the next day we prayed and prayed and prayed over it. Somehow, despite my initial apprehension, I felt an unexplained peace.

We agreed that Kris would go through the process, and told our family there was a good chance that we'd be moving. After a few months of interviewing, we received the call just a couple days before Thanksgiving that the company offered the position to a different, more executive level candidate with prior experience in that type of management. I was devastated. Not because I was desperate to get out to Colorado, but because for the past few months we truly believed that we were following God's calling for our family. We've felt for years that this "stop" in Okemos was temporary, and we were going to be moving onto something more permanent. Yet, here we were being told to stay in the waiting room indefinitely, and that was a blow. I felt angry at God mainly because I suddenly started doubting our ability to differentiate between His voice and our own thoughts.

After Thanksgiving, though, we decided to settle. We decided that THIS was were God wanted us, and who are we to doubt Him as the Painter of our Picture to tell Him that He was doing it wrong? For one of the first times I could remember, I felt restful and content.

Two weeks later Kris came upstairs from working with tears in his eyes. He let me know that although He wasn't the first choice candidate, the one who was offered the position originally declined the job after being offered equity sake in his current company. They called Kris and offered him the job. We chewed on it for a few days and really had to consider if we would do this... We decided two things...
#1) The circumstances hadn't changed. We felt God leading our family this way, and perhaps He was allowing OUR faithfulness to be tested.

#2) He wanted us to remain humble through this process. We had just finished telling everyone we knew that Kris HADN'T gotten the job and we were staying... Everyone knew Kris wasn't "first choice" and so we received built in humility in the circumstance. :)

If it wasn't hard enough calling people to tell them about the opportunity in Colorado, it was ten times harder to call people who were so relieved that we weren't moving and tell them that actually, yes we were going...! It was so, so, so hard. People were shocked and saddened, but also happy for us.

I've never felt more bittersweet at any other time in life. Guys, this is harder than graduating high school or college.  I have never lived more than two hours from family, so this is going to be a challenge. But I am confident that we serve a faithful God... Far more faithful than we are. He will sustain, and we are confident that His plan far exceeds Kris and his new position at work. We KNOW He has a purpose for our family in Colorado, and we are prayerfully seeking exactly what that may be. In the meantime, we sold our house and we're starting to say our goodbyes. And so we go, and so we trust that His grace is sufficient.