A Bittersweet Symphony

"Cause it's a bittersweet symphony this life...." The Verve

Being a missionary kid, change & transition came with the territory. From the day I was born in L'hopital Canape Verde(The Green Couch Hospital) in Haiti, there were people who loved me in another culture & place who actually shared genes with me whom I wouldn't meet for 3 more months.

And so it began.

I would forever live away from someone that I loved.

As a little girl, I hated this. I would walk through the airport on our way to board a plane back to our little tropcial island, holding my grandmothers's hand and say, "I don't want to go, Granny."

My heart would ache with every goodbye and rejoice in every hello. I learned quickly that when you are loved and love people around the world, one person's sadness at seeing you leave is another person's joy in holding you close.

And since I was born into this, you would think that I would be used to it by now.

I'm NOT!

And now it is that time again, time to move forward, time to make changes, time to say MORE goodbyes.

We are leaving South Africa.

In 3 weeks time, we will be packing up our things and flying back to Salisbury, MD, to pursue the next season of our lives.

What is that you would like to know? So would we.....HA!

We have been feeling the urging of the Holy Spirit for the past couple of months that our season here was over, but it was just so hard to get to that final decision.

But decide we have...after MUCH, MUCH prayer and trepidation.....

In 1999 our pastor at Oral Roberts University once told us that sometimes the Holy Spirit leads you as much from a lack of peace as a peace in situations. That is where we are now -- knowing it is TIME to go, but not QUITE knowing what is next.

So since we don't want to just jump into the next thing JUST to do "something," and we truly want to hear from God, we will be going back to Maryland and maybe to Haiti for a little while to hear clearly the leading of the Holy Spirit.

We realize that to many this will be a surprise and/or a shock. We realize that some may not understand or agree. We realize that some will be happy and some will be sad. And we realize that many of you will hold us up to our BIG DAD -- we hope that will be all of you....

Thus the strains of the bittersweet symphony sound again...

Will you consider joining with us in prayer ESPECIALLY during this transitional season that we will be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit, that we will ONLY do the Father's will, and that we will do the purpose for which we were created in the way HE has planned?