Perhaps the hardest decision of all

In February 2014, my skin was crawling with excitement for the news that my husband was offered a transfer to Nashville, where I imagined we would put a stake in the ground and reclaim our Southern roots – forever.

There would be family gatherings on porches, where laughter and memories would suspend amid the soft glow of the summer sunset; rain storms that summoned angry skies but left us with the indulgent drum of thunder and the smell of awakened earth; new memories in a familiar land that felt almost a fantasy. It was to be home, after all, filled with a new set of God’s promises.

In a blurred couple of weeks, our life was haphazardly thrown into boxes and onto a Penske truck due East. There were moments of mourning for the small family we’d grown in our adopted home of Colorado. But the hope of newness overcame it.

Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox …  

that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement.

That movement subdued the pang of doubt and, as I found later, put the voice of God on hold.

This transition brought many changes with it. The opportunity to stay at home with our then one-year-old daughter was my favorite. More traffic and a longer commute for my husband, who we saw less of as a result was another. The potential of a house in a far off suburb that, geographically, felt more like Alabama than Tennessee, but that we wouldn’t be approved for, for a year or more. And the loss of a church we loved.

These were small changes. Though some nuisances, none were trials by any means. As a family, however, we began to feel and appear like deer caught in the headlights. We were disconnected and a little dismayed, clutching close to our chests the hope that this was God’s hand at work and all we needed was to “Be still and know…”

It was a slightly cold and drizzly Friday in March that I sat alone in an unfamiliar doctor’s office in Franklin, feeling homesick and out of place, that I looked at the void and lifeless ultrasound of what should have been our second baby at nine weeks in utero. All the air left my body, the tears sweltered and hope vanished.

This was not how it was supposed to be, I fumed at God. I wanted nothing to do with this new place, these dreams we’d laid and fresh plans we’d hatched, until I heard him reply:

Then, dear child, how was it supposed to be?

Nothing could have prepared me for that day, for that news, for His response. His words reverberated deep into every fissure of my being, and clarity consumed me.

I had become impatient, unwilling to wait and see how God was going to meet my desire to feel “home” that I had completely ignored His desires for me and my family, the plans He was etching before my very eyes, the place that had become our home and the people who had made it just that. And as I betrayed his trust, he fell silent. The way we sometimes must when our child repeatedly ignores our better judgment about an unsafe activity or erupts into full meltdown mode despite our urges to “wait just a moment,” or calmly discuss the request first.

In comparison to God, our foresight is like that squishy part of a toddler’s brain that renders them completely incapable of social and emotional reasoning.

Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him, and He will do it … Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.

Sure, I had been committed, to my way and my timeline. That’s the genius of it: God’s timing is ALWAYS Perfect.

Losing a child, at any stage of life, breaks us. For some things, words cannot suffice. Even seeing it with my own eyes wasn’t enough. At first, I prayed and prayed and waited for my body to prove my doctor and the ultrasound wrong. They weren’t. But in my follow-up visit, my doctor walked straight in and, without a word, enveloped me in her arms as I cried. That was all I needed that day.

But afterward, God was there to meet me in my brokenness and put the pieces back the way He intended them to be.

The course of our reverse move across country in the matter of two months was like watching an artist at work, as if life was just waiting for us to resume in Colorado. God was waiting for us there, too.

It’s hard to explain or describe to people who ask what led us back to Colorado, and I find my answer comes off sounding sort of rash and uninformed. There were some who said, “But you didn’t even give it a chance.”

But after months of silence, God spoke loud and clear into my heart:

For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

In 10 years, I have never felt more at home.