Moving On

For the past 10 years, Eric and I have made our home in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina. We started our life together here as we entered into marriage at Bat Cave Baptist Church, and we've grown our family together here. We love this place and the people in it, and we love our church dearly.

Living in the mountains was really a dream come true for me.  I was a farm girl that grew up in the flat lands of Eastern North Carolina close to the beach, but almost every year growing up, our family would take trips to the mountains. I always loved those trips so much, and would be in awe of the splendor of God's creation here.

When I graduated high school, I was thrilled to go off to college at Gardner-Webb University in the foothills of NC. My dad started college (then known as Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute) at the same time as me, but he was about an hour west of where I was attending school. On the weekends, I'd come visit my parents in the mountains and go to church with them, and this is when I really began to fall in love with the mountains and the people of Bat Cave Baptist Church. Bat Cave became my family when I was just 18 years old (13 years ago!!!).  They loved my family and supported us and prayed for us and encouraged us. It only seemed natural that when it came time for Eric and I to get married that we'd marry at Bat Cave Baptist Church.

The people of Bat Cave were so good to Eric and I as we prepared to get married. They stepped up and threw us a wedding shower, prepared food for the reception, a dear friend did all the flowers for the wedding, and another dear friend took our photos. We didn't have to do much of anything, and we were so blessed. Our wedding day was beautiful and we shared our first kiss ever on the stage of Bat Cave Baptist Church in front of family and friends. It's one of our sweetest memories, and we'll forever be grateful for everything that our church did for us.

After our wedding we moved on to New Orleans to serve with Samaritan's Purse and help those who had been affected by Hurricane Katrina. When our time in New Orleans was up, we knew Bat Cave was where we were supposed to move to. So in June 2007, we loaded up our camper and came back to the beautiful mountains of NC.

Back in North Carolina, we had plenty of ups and downs. In our 10 years here, we've lived in 7 different homes, one of those being the church parsonage for 2 years. Eric and I have seen friends come and go in our 10 years here. We learned how to function as a married couple here. We were just kids when we got married, and now we're just a bit bigger kids. We've been so blessed to be a part of a church family that has supported us through so many tough times and so many wonderful times.

Our church family prayed for us as we lost our first child to a miscarriage and then struggled through years of infertility. Our church family supported us as we became foster parents and rejoiced with us as we adopted our precious Shaun. Our church family continued to rejoice with us as we found out we were pregnant with our darling Lyric and then our adorable Kuyper. Our children have been growing up in this church and have made some sweet friends here.

All of this and more is why making this announcement is so bittersweet. Bat Cave has been our home and our family, and Bat Cave will always have a part of our hearts, but God has seen fit to move us on to a new stage of life. Many know that Eric has been in Bible college for the past few years. He has a passion for teaching the Bible, and he has desired to enter a role that would allow him to teach more for quite awhile. He has loved being the worship pastor at Bat Cave, but we've known that God was moving us on from that role for some time now. God has opened up the doors for Eric to become the Discipleship Director at Redeemer Community Church in Dearborn, Michigan. Yes, we're moving to Michigan. It's hard to believe that we're leaving the south, but we recently spent a week in Michigan and we fell in love with the church. We are looking forward to what God has in store for us and the church there. It's a very bittersweet move for us. Bitter because we're leaving so many friends, our family, and our mountains behind. Sweet because we're getting a fresh start in a thriving community and Eric is getting to do something that God has gifted him to do and getting to do it with some wonderful and godly leaders.

Please pray for us as we start this new journey. Specifically pray for us to be able to transition into this new place and role and glorify God in the midst of it. Pray that Eric will be faithful to fulfill his new role to the best of his ability. Pray that we can find the perfect house for our family to move into and all the funds needed to do so. Pray for our whole family, as I know we're going to be very homesick and grandparents are going to miss us and the grandkids. We are going to be living 10 hours from my parents and almost 13 from Eric's parents. Needless to say, we're all struggling with the thought of this distance. We and the grandparents are very sad that we won't get to see each other as much, and I know the grandkids are going to really miss their grandparents.

We truly are excited and also completely terrified. We want to bring glory to our God and serve Him well. We love everyone here in North Carolina, and we are so thankful for the relationships that God has placed in our lives to help us grow and mature. We will definitely be coming back to visit, so this isn't a goodbye forever, but a "we'll see you later." I will be trying to keep up with our family blog when we move away to update everyone on how we're doing, so follow along here for updates. :)

We love you all so much. We'll be here through the end of August, and we're hoping to make the most of our last 2ish months here. Thank you all for everything you have been to us. We're going to miss everyone more than we can say!