Our Story: Part Five

If you've been following our story, you'll know that I relayed several dreams and clear words from the Lord that eventually led us to make the decision to move to Kansas City.

Although we had made the decision, we still had 9 months before we would actually move. With a tentative move date set for "the end of the school year", we started school and began to prepare to put our house on the market. Sometime in the winter we tried a "For Sale By Owner", showed the house lots and lots of times, and did not sell it. By April we decided to list it with a realtor.

With the school year winding down we started packing and preparing to move. We faced a series of horrible attacks in which I know the enemy really planned to take us out. God's grace has never been more evident to me in my entire life than it was the Spring of 2006. Though I would never want to relive that season, God has used it to strengthen us in so many ways.

I flew to Kansas City in May to look for housing for us. The Lord provided the housing before I even got on the plane, but He allowed me to take the journey to KC for the sake of my heart. I flew home, finished the school year, and packed some more.

We arrived in Kansas City the weekend of June 24th, after a very long 22 hour journey from PA to KC. I drove our little Subaru with two cats and two boys; and John drove the U-haul towing our van with Isabelle as his faithful companion!

John began traveling with Derek on ministry trip immediately that summer as well as preparing for the school year, and playing in the Prayer Room. I had the summer mostly to settle in. It was a summer of healing for my heart. That summer marks the season in my life of my most honest talks with the Lord. The gut wrenching kind that David had so often when you read the Psalms. I had those kind of chats with God that summer, and you know what, He listened. He listened a lot.

I will always look back at the summer of 2006 as the summer that I really began to understand that the Father loves me even in my weakness, even when I have nothing to offer Him, even when my heart is dark and so unlovely in my own eyes. I will remember that summer as the time I learned to lean hard. I walk with a limp even now.