Our Treasures

This final week here in PA has kept this family hopping!  From packing to playing, our days have been jam-packed full of boxes and trash bags, friends and family, coffee and... more coffee.  We've spent the days cleaning and packing and the evenings visiting and fellowshipping.  Our girls have hosted and/or gone to a sleepover nearly every night since Sunday.  Vacation Bible School has made it so we've been able to see most of our church friends at least in passing almost every day.

We've made it to the final stretch; the last three days in Pennsylvania.  I think we are all approaching these last days with mixed emotions and a good deal of weariness.  There's a part of me that wishes the move was over so I could just sit down and not have to think about what still needs done.  I literally dream about packing all night long.  But, of course, there's the other part of me that knows when it's done, it's done - we are moved.

I won't be able to blog for a while so let me fill you in on what the next few days look like and I'll share our whole moving story once the deed is done and we get internet again.  My purpose in sharing this blog and our plans for the week ahead is twofold; one, to include you, our friends and family in these steps of our journey and two, to ask for your prayers as we approach these next few days as a family.  Emotionally, physically, and spiritually, we will need strength to finish and finish well.

Today, we will sign the deed over to our buyers.  Settlement will occur after we are gone but the papers we need to sign will be done with a notary prior to our move.  We're going to do some busy work with the bank and the store and then Naomi and I are going to get our hair done by Debbie before we leave.  Tonight, VBS closing program and then spending time with our friends.  Saturday, Luke will pick up the UHaul in the morning and the afternoon and evening we will spend with my family at my brother's house.  My mom's parents will be there as well as my parents and siblings; a special but bittersweet time.  No doubt tears will flow at some point that night.

Sunday morning we will go to CBIC one more time before we move (I will not say last time because it is NOT our last) and our church is going to pray over us as a family and send us out.  I cannot tell you how much this means to us.  To know that we do not go alone but that our church family supports us, loves us and is sending us out is a blessing beyond words.  After church, Luke and I will have a chance to eat lunch with our pastor and his wife while the kids have a play date with some of their friends and then... back up the mountain to pack the truck.  Pizza, playing and prayer will fill our final evening in South Mountain, PA.  I can't think of a more appropriate way to conclude our time here than with those things because, yes even down to the pizza, these things have filled our home for the past 11 years and that is how I will remember it.

We have a sign at our door that says, "Welcome.  May all who enter as guests, leave as friends"  I think that has happened.  We've been blessed with the greatest treasures ever known to mankind; friendship and family.  It is not good for man to be alone.  It is good for us to have friends.  We've packed up and thrown away lots of "stuff".  Those are not our treasures.  Our treasures are in our heart, stored in heaven where moth and rust cannot destroy.  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.  Our treasure, our heart, is you, our friends and family; past, present and future, and above all our God, who gives every good and perfect gift.  

The next blog you read will be from a "Kentuckian" (is that even a word?!?)  As Luke would say, "See you on the flip side!"