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Thursday, February 18, 2016

Leaving Birmingham

Last day at the Birmingham house

You figure six months into this thing I would be ready to tackle this post head on, but I'm really not, especially when my tender-hearted three year old told me just last night that she missed her old school and her friends in Birmingham.  How do you sum up a significant portion of your adult life thus far into one blog post?   I can't, and I won't even try.  The fact of the matter is that I have been avoiding writing this post because I knew it would bring to the surface all kinds of emotions that I have been stuffing away for the last six months.

If you had asked me 8 years ago if I would have ever been sad to leave Birmingham, I would have answered with a resounding no, and probably would have laughed in your face.  But there's something to be said about your first home, where Matthew and I began our married life, where we navigated the ups and downs of our early marriage, grad school, and nursing school (twice).  Where we made life-long friends that were with us through every milestone (even when we lived in Houston), and cried with us when God turned us another direction, e.g. Houston and Nashville. A place where we began to raise our children with friends who were so like-minded, we were convinced God's divine providence placed them in our life at just the right moment in time.

So, when people ask me how glad I am to be back "home", my answer is always "yes, but...".  I could follow the "but..." portion of the sentence for days.  So, instead of feeling sad on this perfectly beautiful Thursday, while my kids are upstairs napping (even Burton!), I am going to choose to be happy and look at it this way... I feel blessed to have been able to live in such a wonderful city, be friends with some of the most selfless people I know, to worship and fellowship with some of the most genuine followers of Christ, and to have worked with people who were both supportive and kind.  I am blessed because our life there was so full, as God truly provided us a home, a true community in Birmingham, when at first glance, I didn't think it was possible.

So, while we are happy to be in Nashville closer to our families, a small part of me will always still think of Birmingham as "home".

These three crazies the weekend we moved.  These aren't the only people I am talking about above, I just don't have pics of anyone else the weekend we moved :(

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