In December we got the phone call that made it official. Summer of 2021, our family would move back to Georgia.
We had known for over a year this was the direction we might be heading. We had talked about it in brief conversations, always putting it off for another day or month until we just couldn’t put it off any longer.
But that phone call made it very real and very permanent. This chapter is closing for our family and a new one is about to begin.
And before the well-meaning love and excitement of friends and family from the east coast begins to pour in, I need you all to know, I love you, but I don’t want to leave California.
A piece of my heart will always call Georgia home. It’s where the seeds of my faith, beliefs, and family values were planted, watered, and grown.
But California is where my soul has sung a song I didn’t know I could sing. I have found an intimacy with my Jesus, my husband, my children, and my friendships I didn’t know was possible.
To leave the life we have built here is an act of pure, submitted obedience to how we feel the Lord is leading both Joey and I in our prayers and conversations with the Lord. We go where our God sends us, no questions asked, just trust.
It was the story of the sending of Abraham that moved us out here (Genesis 12), and it is the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac moving me back (Genesis 22).
Because I am not the same person returning as I was when I left. Seven years of my highest highs and lowest lows, of relying on my family of four, of learning to depend upon strangers who became family, of self-reflection and therapy and stretching myself—seven years of talking to God first and more because sometimes He was the only One around to listen. I am not who I was when I left, and my soul longs to stay. The calling of Abraham to sacrifice his promised heir and beloved son feels very relatable with this move. I feel I am being asked to sacrifice all the promises God fulfilled of my own dreams here in California, trusting He knows best and has better plans ahead.
I wanted California to be my Promised Land. I wanted to put down roots here and bask in the beauty of its coastlines, the wonder of the ocean, and majesty of the mountains for all my days. To live here is to have access to adventure and exploration every weekend for the rest of your life. On my down days, my low days, riding waves in the frigid ocean is refreshing, renewing, and rejuvenating. In the chill of the water, the weight of the world washes away, and I’m left like a child with the thrill of the moment right in front of me. I am fully present. Salt, wave, ocean, sunset, bonfire, my children playing, my framily laughing—fully present in the gifts of God in my life. Soaking them all into my being like the sunshine that is always present. Never wishing to be somewhere else.
I love my Peach State home, and in the fall, I will relish the crisp temperatures, the need for fuzzy sweaters, and the sound of leaves rustling. In the spring, I will smile at cherry blossoms and how the world comes alive with green. I will reconnect with family and find joy in the journey of high school for my children, but I’m not sure I will ever not wish to be somewhere else.
Part of me prays that’s not true, that the ache of leaving will fade, and part of me prays I can carry the weight of wanting because the people in California I will want to be with are that dear to me. For them to cease being a part of my life, feels like a death I cannot bear.
There is not a day that passes I don’t shed at least one small tear over saying goodbye, over last experiences here on the west coast, over a chapter in a book that is ending, and you just wish it weren’t. It was that good. It is that good. I’d reread it again and again.
But there is a peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:6). A peace that only comes from my Jesus Who abides with me daily. We already have a home. The Lord quite literally handed us the perfect house on a silver platter in the middle of downtown Marietta paying below appraisal. If that’s not a modern-day parting of the Red Sea in today’s real estate climate, I don’t know what is. The Lord has given us a peace and a path for sending our kids to Marietta City Schools for education next year. This will be their first experience with public school, and I covet your prayers for them and for me. Again, another choice covered in supernatural peace, shrouded in its own layers of the unknown.
It’s difficult to describe the inner tug-of-war inside my mind, but my soul is at peace. I rest assured God will not lead me anywhere He has not already been Himself, nor somewhere He will not go with me.
We are not told much about Abraham’s emotions, thoughts, or reactions as he made that trek to Mount Moriah with Isaac. Was he angry at God? Did he curse and mumble under his breath as he cut the wood for the sacrifice of his son? Did tears of great grief and fear fall from his eyes as his aged hands shakily packed the knife that would take his son? Did he set his course with eyes fixed full of hope knowing His God was true, no matter the cost? We don’t know.
And I think we don’t know because it doesn’t matter. Abraham’s emotions, reasons and thoughts were all secondary to his obedience. In the end, how he got to the point of obedience was not as important as the actual act of walking by faith and loving nothing on this earth more than he loved God.
I want that kind of faith and trust in Jesus as my legacy. I have screamed and wept and hoped also on this journey to leave California, but in the end, what will matter, what does matter, is our family will obey and follow in faith where the Lord leads, no matter the cost. I have no reason to believe my Jesus will not provide every step of the journey, one moment at a time. He has already gone before us. He has already made smooth so many rocky paths. He has remained true and so must I.
Like so many stories in the Bible, Abraham’s is not just a story, it’s an example to follow. It’s the instructions to life we so desperately seek, crave, and beg God to give. He already has. He’s given us all we need for life and godliness in the scriptures and the Holy Spirit, all made possible by the death and resurrection of his only begotten, beloved Son (2 Peter 1:3, 2 Timothy 3:16). Maybe one of the things I love most about my Jesus is He never asks me to walk the path of an experience He does not already know intimately Himself (Hebrews 4:15). The details may look different, but the emotions of the heart are the same. He knows what it takes to do what He asks from first-hand experience.
Why would I not follow? How could I ever think I have a better plan or better way? Where He goes, I go. His people will be my people, and His land my land (Ruth 1:16). ‘Til death we unite. To live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21). The older I get, the longer I follow, the more that phrase makes sense.
What do you choose to follow so passionately you willingly
sacrifice all that is most dear to you? Is it worth it? My Jesus is always
worth it.
