As I sit here listening to the tromping and hammering of roofers replacing my hail-beaten roof, the one that will only belong to me for 10 more days, and with the inocuous smell of cardboard filling my nostrils and with the faint sounds of Angry Birds cackling, squawking, and crashing down snowy boards on the iPad, I’m contemplating whether I should be brewing coffee, packing dishes, creating graphics for a client, or typing a message to my friends around the world about the fact that all of this is happening and why.

Obviously, I’ve opted for the latter.  I have procrastinated this duty for quite some time, mainly because I have procrastinated it for quite some time.  See, if I had been keeping my peeps all over the world (and mostly the South) in the loop all through this journey, I wouldn’t have such a big long story to tell.  But, it has been such an arduous journey, and so much of it intensely personal and spiritual and just plain MYSTERIOUS, that I haven’t felt the liberty to discuss it publicly.

Even after Bill’s announcing his decision to our church in May that he would be resigning his position as church business administrator here in Altus, Oklahoma, I still was not ready to talk with the masses about this journey that we are on and about the fact that we are choosing to uproot from our 8-year-deep plot of friendships and community to move across the country in the absence of another job or ministry position or any other “official” and socially acceptable reason for doing so.

It is still a very mysterious journey, and though it is more real now that the house is sold, the boxes are packed, and the whole world knows about it, we STILL don’t have all the answers to the questions waiting to roll off your fingers into the comment box.  I wish we did, because, honestly, they are very good and very important questions to which we would like to have answers.  They are questions that, left unanswered at this point in our journey, have most certainly caused others to question our sanity and good judgment.

The long and short of it is this.  Over the past few months (or years?), we have felt God urging us to “GO.”  But for a long time He never said WHERE or WHAT.  Through a series of circumstances, we discovered a little town called Helena, Alabama that we believed was the place we were to go next.  While we have some personal reasons for this exact location, the biggest reason we chose Helena is the WILD GOOSE  led us there.

Celtic Christians referred to the Holy Spirit as “Ah Geadh-Glas”, or the Wild Goose.  I’m not going into the history or beliefs there (Google it), but we can testify that we have been on a Wild Goose Chase for the last several months.  Some of our questions have been: How…?  When…?  But what if…?  But how…?  We still have lots of hows and what-ifs.

So what are you going to do?” you are asking.  What is Bill’s job?  What is your job?  Do you have family there?  And to that I say, we are closer to family, and I do have an aunt and uncle there, but we are still chasing the Wild Goose to find out how we will make a living.  Our plan at this time is for the two of us to work together in my web design business.  (Anybody need a website????)  But the truth of the matter is, we don’t know for a fact that the Lord plans for us to do that.  We are still walking in faith, on an invisible bridge, much like the one in Indiana Jones, and we are absolutely 100% depending on God to show us our next step before we take it.  I should be inserting a bunch of scriptures here about the promises of God that we have been reading and CLINGING to over the past few months, but coffee and boxes are calling.  If you’re a believer, you know these scriptures.  If you’re not, message me, because we need to talk about life lived on the Wild Goose chase, and how absolutely, incredibly satisfying, amazing, and breathtaking of a journey that it is.

So…we are moving to Helena, Alabama next week.  We close on our new unbelievable-provision-from-God house (which leaves the most awesome story I need to tell) on the day after we close on this house (which is also another story-teller), and, unless unforeseen circumstances prevent all of this from happening, (and we’ve already lost one nearly-purchased house in the deal), we will have a new, oh-so-Southern address by next Friday.  As for the rest of our plans for our very, frighteningly near future, YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE!!  😀  And I am jump-up-and-down excited about it.