Fast forward, right? So to say that the last 12 weeks of our life (ever since the moment we made the decision to come to YWAM) has been insanely crazy is an understatement… These early blog posts are coming one on top of another, but that’s just to catch us, and y’all, up!
I’ll start where I left off last… We closed on 86 Ottawa, our home for almost 6 years, on June 11. The owners graciously gave us 10 days occupancy to get all of our stuff OUT (one day less would’ve been devastating… we came down to the wire that last day). Friends of ours WELCOMED us into their home for the weekend. We said many tear-filled goodbyes; I have a treasure-trove of cards with the sweetest words… On Monday, June 24, we left Michigan and headed south… We laid our heads down in a cheap Motel 6 in Little Rock, Arkansas. On Tuesday, we made it to my sister’s home in Austin. God gave us a ginormous gift in time with my sister and her family. Her casa was our casa — and we relished the time away from our home, in her home. The kids swam, we drank coffee together in the mornings, the kids trampolined, played dress-up, and opened up a restaurant serving the best crocheted delights in town (my niece is a crochet-extraordinaire), the guys played golf, we saw a movie; the whole 3+ days was a GIFT.
We said more tear-filled goodbyes on Saturday; we left Stacie & Mike’s & made our way to Tyler both rested, and with full hearts… We arrived on the YWAM campus around 5pm. We unpacked our trailer & made a list of essentials we needed to pick up from Walmart-ASAP. (Seriously, this whole experience feels a little like going back to college….. with 7 kids…. so maybe a little bit different) We needed snacks, and coffee, and towels, and sunglasses, and cereal, and sheets…
Today was the day that all that we imagined YWAM would be like was put to the test. How did the real thing measure up to expectation? For some of us, we were pleasantly surprised by the space for our family (we live in the Annex of Dorm 3 (pictured above – the annex is the building on the right side of the picture; from the little red car, over); we have 3 bedrooms & 1 bathroom to share between the 9 of us), and the proximity to campus (our dorm is closest to the classrooms & cafeteria). Others of our crew struggled. As you can imagine, there are a variety of personalities & preferences inside our family. For at least a couple of our people, YWAM was not something very happily anticipated. As a family, our attitude about coming averaged out somewhere around GOOD, but for those on the more skeptical side, it was not love at first sight.
Sunday night is Family Night here at YWAM; which basically is a time of worship, prayer and a speaker — it’s basically Sunday night church 🙂 And basically, we all needed a little (a lot) of worship in our life on Sunday night. Moving, and saying goodbye, and stepping into something brand new, and tired little people = hard times. I can’t remember the exact songs we sang, or too much about what was spoken, but there was a refreshing of even the hardest hearted of us all; there were lots of good, healthy tears falling…
Our God has been so faithful to us. He knew our needs before we did. He’s supplied all of them. He’s LAVISHED His love on us through family and friends. He’s working on the inside, unseen places of our hearts, even when we can’t see or feel those results right away. He was faithful selling our house; faithful to give us landing places with friends and family before YWAM; faithful to encourage our hearts through worship & conversation & notes & phone calls & new friends…
Transition can be hard. (And I can tell you this because I’m editing a couple of weeks later….. it really was!) BUT. We know the blessing of being here will outweigh by far the challenges that come with saying yes… (and I can also tell you that this has proven true as well, over the last couple of weeks).