Take me home, country roads

I meant to write this post months ago, but things got crazy in a hurry and before I knew it, it was time and we were gone. Let me back up a bit...

In early April my parents came for a visit to South Carolina. While they've always come to see us at least once a year since we moved, since Max arrived they had been making the trip even more frequently than they had for the previous 7 years and we were happy to be welcoming them in our home for the third time in 9 months.

My mom makes it no secret that she's been praying and hoping that Dan and I would someday find our way back to the Midwest; we moved to South Carolina from Kansas just a few short months after we got married. After years and years of talking about a move, Dan and I had sort of let the idea go. After all, we had our condo we couldn't sell, then we were waiting to adopt, then we were waiting to finalize our adoption... The timing just never seemed to work out.

But then it happened. And it happened while my parents were visiting, which, at least for me, felt like a reassurance from God that THIS was the time. After all, it would seem cruel and unusual punishment to get my mama's hopes up like that, right?

In early April Dan got a call about a job in Omaha. On a whim, he had applied for a job in a lower position, one that logistically probably wouldn't have worked for us, but they called about another. After a round of telephone interviews, he flew to Omaha for face-to-face interview and had a job offer by the end of the week. He accepted.

In a move that was completely out of character for both Dan and I, we decided to leave South Carolina not knowing where we were going to live when we arrived in Omaha. Fortunately, my parents live just a few hours away in Kansas, so we packed up the pets and Max and we were off.

We arrived to my parents' house in Kansas on June 1 and left for Omaha to find a home to rent a few days later. Miraculously, we found a house fairly quickly, after just a couple of days of looking. Frustratingly, the house wasn't available for TWO months.

It was a hard decision to make, but we felt like the neighborhood we wanted to be in was worth the wait, so we put down a deposit on the house and Max and I stayed in Kansas while Dan worked in Omaha during the week and came to my parents' house on the weekend to spend time with us.

Oh buddy, let me tell you. It made for two of the most exhausting months of my life.

We celebrated a first birthday, had nights of screaming and crying (both Max and I), terrible back pain days, nights out with brothers and parents, the death of a beloved family dog, emergent trips to the vet for yet another dog, all after packing up and leaving our home and our friends.

It was a challenge to say the least.

But as I sat on my new front porch last night drinking a cocktail, enjoying the quiet (after all the motorcycles shut down for the night!), I got this overwhelming feeling of contentment. No, I don't know anyone in Omaha yet. It is lonely, and it's scary, but this feeling, the feeling of contentment, comes from knowing I am right where I am meant to be.