Well we’re here. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, accompanied by Nic’s cautiously brave but supportive family (thanks guys!), we loaded the kids and our suitcases into the leave-behind car, and headed to the airport in Toronto. The timing worked out well, despite the lines, and we spent very little time waiting around. By 11am PST we were in the Seattle area, and by noon, loading up into my faithful Saab — very grateful I had driven there to have it waiting for us.
Over the weekend we were contacted by some of the folks involved in our relocation process (and there are a lot: the moving company, the packing/unpacking company, the vehicle transport company, the mortgage broker, the mortgage document collector, the mortgage underwriter, the real estate agent, the insurance broker…to name a few) to let us know some of our timing was moving up. We’d learned from the truck driver that his ETA was 6 days — drastically different than the 10-30 we had been informed, and were concerned that the new house wouldn’t even be closed by the time he arrived. It turns out God had other plans, and I worked the printer/scanner frantically to get things in place in time for an early close on the new house.
The end result is that we moved into the temporary apartment upon our arrival, gave the kids a little nap, and then started furniture shopping for the house we’ll likely move into onto on Thursday!
Meanwhile, my coworkers, in my absence, decided that this would be a good week for my first business trip. Meaning I had Monday morning to sign some more documents, a little time to greet my team’s newest hire and my office buddy (we double up on offices at my new employer) and then had to rush back to the airport to fly out for California — for what’s turning out to be a very worthwhile trip; a veritable who’s-who tour of exciting tech companies.
This weekend we’ll work on getting the house settled, maybe find some of that furniture, and attend a church picnic with the little congregation that seems likely to be our church family here. They’re a small, quite young church, with their priorities straight and their teaching Biblically sound. It’ll be a bit of a change of pace for us, but it looks like we’ll fit in and be able to help out, so we’re excited to try it out.
So shall (hopefully) end 6 weeks of craziness. It will be good to have a home again, where we’re all together, and can start establishing the routines our kids need to feel safe and stable. Although there are lots of things back at home that will be missing from that foundation, we know God will supply new building blocks for our home. That He will add to the architecture of our lives in new and unique ways — ways that we wouldn’t have had if we hadn’t stepped out in faith. And although there will be challenges here, there will be growth.
We won’t back down from those challenges, and we will welcome the growing pains, because we can’t imagine a life where there isn’t more out there waiting — for those willing to look for it, to work for it, and to give it back to God with thanksgiving and praise…