Goodbye Gibby

So it's really happening. Tomorrow is the day. The house is mostly boxed up, partly in chaos and despite two and a half months of sorting, packing and more sorting, I suspect we will be up very late doing more of the same. The practical side of moving house is not for the faint-hearted and I don't think I can even attempt to adequately express the emotional upheaval of this particular house move. More than once over the past few days as I've welled up - or full on snorted and snotted through the tears! - someone has asked me, "if it's this emotional and you're this sad to leave, why on earth are you going?" It's a very good question, especially when you're presented with a red-eyed, tearful wreck of a woman who is keeping her sunglasses close and will not be wearing eye make-up anytime this week!

I first wrote and shared about this move via this blog back in January. If you missed that, it's here: http://dailyrainbows.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/mitis-on-move.html?m=1 Since that post, all has gone ahead with the house we found and believed God had marked out for us, with very little complication; the people buying our house have been incredibly patient too as they viewed and offered on it just ten days after it went on the market and that was in November (4 and a half months ago now!) The practical has been straightforward but the emotions have run high ever since we accepted that God was in fact asking us to take this step and make the move.

I honestly can't begin to cover everything that's happened but suffice it to say, nothing besides a definite call of God would make us make a move like this. We are excited at all that the future holds and the people who God has ready for us to love and hopefully show His love to. We are utterly delighted that we will be living just across the road from a family who are like family to us and are already hard at work loving and supporting various different people and projects in the refugee community especially. Getting stuck in with them as they plant this church will be a blessing and a challenge but what an amazing adventure. We want our boys to grow up knowing that nothing is more important than loving God and loving people. Anything else is secondary, however wonderful it may be.

Remind me of that next time you see me sad about what and who we are saying goodbye to!

We have been so very blessed in our seven and a half years living here. We moved in when we were just in our mid twenties (*late twenties for Vi, cough cough*), just the two of us, not sure what we had to offer this community but certain God had called us down here from our idyllic little house in the valleys. I was scared and didn't think we could possibly be accepted here. Not only have we been accepted, we've been welcomed, loved and made part of the most colourful but genuine community, the likes of which I could never have imagined before we moved here.

Don't get me wrong, it hasn't all been rosy. Far from it. It's been quite a mixture of highs and lows in fact. We brought two babies home here, went through the heartache of losing another; we got our first dog (not that he deserves to be called one, he's a pansy!) We've endured multiple health issues and bouts of depression; we've had a fair few different neighbours but also a core of the same lovely people, many of whom have become our friends or at the very least people who we know by name and would stop and chat to however briefly. We've witnessed numerous 'Gibby incidents', the likes of which would have had me running for the hills had I known before we moved here that these would become much more "normal". We've cried at some things we've seen and heard, laughed our heads off at others. We have seen God at work. In short, we have built a life here and begun to raise a family here.

 And tomorrow we say goodbye.

 But we also say hello. To all that God has for us in this next season and all that He has prepared for us to do. If I could tell my 25 year old self, as she waited to get the keys to this house we've made a home, just what the coming years would hold and how heartbroken she would be to leave, she would never have feared that move the way she did in 2009. In the same way, I know that this next adventure will be worth it all. If only it wasn't so emotional in the process!!
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 (Just wait til Friday now....the school goodbye is a whole other emotional rollercoaster to ride, which I can't even face thinking about today!)