What are we doing here?

What ARE we doing here? If you follow me on Instagram, you may be wondering why we left our east coast city life or why I walked away (hopefully temporarily) from a great career in higher education after nearly 12 years.

To be honest, I have to remind myself what we're doing here too. Not in a "get me out of here" kind of way, but more of a "how did this even happen?" I realized I hadn't really shared how we actually got here. I mean the HOW behind WHY we live in eastern Colorado.

It's a great story (but I'm biased of course) and one I'm excited to share.

For the past few years, we had been planning to move to Colorado once my husband, Brandon, finished graduate school. We didn't have any family in New England and while I didn't grow up near grandparents because my dad was in the military, I yearned for my kids to experience living close to at least one grandparent.

Brandon finished his coursework in seminary last August. He had to quit his job to attend the last two classes because they met during the day (all of his previous courses met evenings and weekends). It was our first step of faith in this process-- to go to a single income and trust that God would provide a job 2,000 miles away and he could begin his career as a pastor.

We also had a bunch of unfinished home improvement projects on our 1922 colonial, so Brandon was able to work on those once his classes ended.

He began the job search for pastoral positions. In an effort to be closer to my family, the search was concentrated in Colorado. After some time of searching in one city and getting discouraged by the lack of openings, we discussed and prayed about widening our search.

We decided to look at the whole state, and even northern New Mexico to increase the options. Every time Brandon came across a new opening, I would check out google maps because several of the towns/cities I had never heard of and I wanted to see how far the drive would be to my dad's house.

Within days of applying for a solo pastorate on the eastern plains of Colorado, he got a phone call from a church and they setup a phone interview in November. While visiting my family at Christmas, we had a chance to meet with the search committee and see the town. Within hours of the interview ending Brandon was asked to preach the following Sunday (four days later), so we extended our stay a few days and got to spend even more time there.

After meeting more people in this small, agricultural town, I was surprised at how easy it was to imagine our little family living there. I felt so genuinely cared for throughout the whole process (and I wasn't even the one they would hire!). About three months after that first phone call, he was officially called as pastor in February. We had about six weeks to have a baby, pack up and plan the move before he would begin on April 1st.

Meanwhile, I was working full-time and growing a baby-- there was plenty to occupy my mind. The due date was getting closer and I was wondering how the whole moving across the country with a toddler and newborn would shake out.

But God provided in yet another amazing way! One Saturday morning Brandon got a phone call from one of the men on the search committee telling him that he and his wife wanted to drive our moving truck across the country for us. What?!

It was truly such a blessing.

So I ended up flying with both kids, while Brandon drove across the country in our car and the couple drove our moving truck.

We moved into the parsonage (with lots of help from our new church family) and had some time to unpack before Brandon officially started.

It's been about a month since the move and there are a lot of people to get to know and places to explore. We are really excited about this opportunity and sometimes while I'm driving, I just look at the huge sky (if you've been to the western United States you know what I'm talking about) and think about how quickly life can change. In a matter of months, we went from Brandon finishing seminary to job searching to moving across the country for him to have this exciting opportunity!