Four years ago we moved across the country from Alberta to Ontario. To say that these past for years have been filled with all of our dreams coming true, would be a gross exaggeration and blatant lie. The past four years have been hands down the most painful years either of us have experienced and we’ve each had our share of struggles. Yes, the unexpected death of Mikail would be at the top of this list, but there are so many other things that happened along the way that broke our brokenness into even more pieces. Amidst all of this heartbreak, there has been incredible healing take place in the last year.

A year ago we walked into the doors of Lakeshore Community Church and were welcomed with open arms. We didn’t know anyone and were not a part of the community and for the first two months, I think we both cried through every single church service as we were finally in a place where we were welcome in our broken state. This past year has been filled with incredible support from the small group we joined as we spurred each other on in each of our struggles and triumphs, learning to become vulnerable about the deep stuff of life.

This winter as we were contemplating what we would do next on this journey, I was given a scripture that I’d never paid attention to before:  You’ve circled this mountain long enough. Now turn north. Deut 2:3 In context this is God speaking to the Israelites who had wandered the desert for 40 years and now they were given the call from God to move on. In that moment I took it as me circling the mountain of grief and PTSD, but didn’t think much about the Now turn north part.

This spring we were forced to face a crossroad…the fork in the road had three roads leading from the place we were and each of those roads included selling our beautiful haven on the river.

We put the house up for sale, praying that the exact family God wants to bless with this haven He gave us, would get it. Yet, when the first offer fell through because they couldn’t get financing, we doubted ourselves. Maybe we had heard God wrong, but were reminded that we’d prayed that the right people would get it. Soon enough we got another offer and it went through. Out of the three directions this fork in the road could take us, to our surprise one of those forks was returning to Grande Prairie. Never in a million years would we have thought we would be called back, yet the call to turn north was the only road that remained open. More and more I was seeing that God was telling us back in January already that we were to turn north. 

And so we did. We sold our haven and bought a much smaller home in need of a lot of love. We drove across the country, with no real job prospects, more unknowns than we could count, and a peace that we hadn’t experienced in the four years since we left Alberta.

We are keeping busy with renovations and making this house our home. Olivia is loving her new school and we are trying to find our place in a church again.  It’s been such a blessing picking up where friendships left off and catch up on four years where a lot of life happened for everyone.  With loving encouragement from Jason, I’m carving out writing time throughout the week. Hopefully that means I’ll be more present on this little space online as I explore different coffee shops in town, creating an office space away from the noise of the renovations:

Hopefully this means I’m back and the hiatus from the blog is now over. We shall see…