We are in the home stretch of this part of the journey.  Sunday will close the cover on a beautiful chapter in our lives at First Baptist Church of Moore, Oklahoma where I have served on staff since August 1, 1993.  I was 23 when I joined the team here and in many ways it seems like only yesterday (well..except that now we have nine kids).  I’m now 41 <gasp> so nearly half of my life has been lived here.  We were just kids when we came here and we literally grew up here.  We had nine kids here.  Most of the major milestones in our lives have happened while we were here (except birth, salvation, marriage and death (unless something is going to happen today at the office that I don’t know about..ha ha)).

All that to say it’s going to be hard to leave the place Sunday night.  It’ll be hard to hear that door latch as I walk away and know that I can’t just grab my keys and go back in.  I won’t have keys anymore.  This has been so much more than a job.  It has actually been our life and our identity is heavily intertwined.  So “untangling” from it without to much pain has been difficult.

If you know me, you know I don’t really hide many things.  The truth of it is…it feels like someone is dying on Sunday night.  I will, honestly, be glad when it’s over and the healing can begin.  I guess I kind of want to just rip the bandaid off.  It seems like we have been saying goodbye for so long (because we have).  Now that it is rushing toward us we just want to get the “goodbye” over with.  Please don’t misunderstand…I don’t want to diminish the feelings we have about leaving and our love for the people here and I don’t want to diminish our church family’s feelings and take away the opportunity for all of us to say goodbye.

We’ve had some beautiful times with friends over the last couple of weeks.  We’ve all said things to each other and expressed our love for each other and how blessings have come from relationships.  It’s funny…we hold those things inside and refrain from saying them until we think we might not have the chance to express them again. Maybe that’s something I need to work on in my relationship building.  But that lesson is for another day.

We were out with some dear friends last night and he quoted this scripture as something he was praying for our future.  Psalm 37:3-6  “Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.  Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.  He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.”

It’s a beautiful promise.

Miracles…

God has shown His power in some really awesome ways.  Our next post will chronicle those miracles.  More for us to be able to remember them in the hard moments, but also to let His glory SHINE like the day in your lives too.  He’s a great God who loves to give good gifts to His children!

ETHAN UPDATE:
All systems are GO.  He’s healing and recovering so well.  His body is functioning correctly and consistently.  It’s beautiful to watch him recover so quickly and it’s also causing us to wonder “what if…” .  What if he had been taken care of appropriately all along?  What if he had had the opportunity to grow and thrive in his early formative years?  What if?  What if?  What if?  But I’m reminded of  this beautiful quote from Corrie Ten Boom:

“There are no ‘ifs’ in God’s Kingdom. His timing is perfect. His will is our hiding place. Lord Jesus, keep me in Your will! Don’t let me go mad by poking about outside it.” 
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

So today we commit to trust Him.  To follow Him.  To find all we need in Him.  To hide in the shadow of His wings.  And to let His light shine through us so the night will be as the day. 

Blessed be the Name of the Lord!