As I sit here on my porch, with the dusk settling around, I’m filled with thoughts of the next day, week, and month coming.

Tomorrow is supposed to be fairly hot, and we don’t have air conditioners set up yet, so I’m wondering if we should retreat from the heat or just endure it. It won’t be unbearable, and it’s always an effort to go somewhere else. Sometimes it’s easier to just stay home even though it’s hot and sticky.

This next week will be filled will preparation for our trip to Guatemala. I need to get everything ready for the children to spend the week with Roy & Mary, and I need to make sure I have everything ready for Michael and me to take along. I’m nervous about it all, but I think it’s doable. I have a long list to follow, so that’s a comfort.

The next month is going to bring some interesting changes for us. Once we get back from Guatemala on the 21st of July, we will start working hard to pack up our belongings and get our house ready to either rent or sell. We have decided it’s time to act, whether we know what every step will be or not. We have room now in Todd’s garage to store things, and we have a place to go while we work on our house and try to get it looking just perfect. Roy and Mary have offered that we can stay in their house while they are in Taiwan for the next school year, so we can actually do projects such as painting and patching and cleaning and have them stay done without fighting the daily life here at home.

Today I’ve been telling the children about our decision to try again to move. The last time we tried was before Judah was born, so I guess that was about three years ago. Since then, all of us have grown even more attached to our home, and even though we dream of living in the country, it’s hard to think of leaving home to do it. We moved to this house when Laura was three months old, which was eleven and a half years ago. All of our children have been babies here. They’ve all learned to walk here. They’ve all been potty-trained here. It’s home.

But it’s time to move on. We are packed in like sardines and would love to have more room to spread out. We dream of big gardens, hikes by the creek, distant neighbors, and even getting a farm dog.

I’m not sure how it’s all going to happen. Sometimes I think of God’s command to Abraham to go to a far country without knowing much more than that. Other times I think about the early settlers and pioneers who left everything to set up a new home in a distant land. We don’t plan to move to a “distant land”, but we know we’ll have to make sacrifices and go without things as we make this transition.

Even though we don’t know our exact future, God does, so we will step out in faith and trust that each step will be made clear to us.