We were at a track meet when the coach asked Jeff a sincere question, “What are you doing here?”  In the context of the conversation, this question was actually “Why are you in Brewton, AL?”  Good question.  Why this small town when our primary job was hundreds of miles away?  Why make the commute to work so difficult?  The answer for us was simple: family.  We never would’ve made it through those years without their help. 

That question stayed with us.

In 2018, Jeff received a notification that he was “flowing through.”   This meant working for a legacy airline, every pilot’s dream. We were thrilled to say the least.  But, with this good news came a realization that it was time. 

Time to move closer to a base.

Jeff was based in Dallas in 2018 and still commuting to work each week.  It was exhausting, and he’d been doing it for thirteen years in bases all over the country. I had made a life for myself in Brewton, had a job I loved, and was finally able to work just one.  Something I haven’t told you is that after my mom died, I had to make a decision about whether or not I would continue working at the church where we’d shared a job for seven and a half years.  I cannot adequately put into words how hard it was to walk back into the same office. She was everywhere.  Computer files she’d named, her handwriting, the Kleenex box she kept close by, everywhere I looked, she was there.  I honestly didn’t know if I could do it.  Many days, I would stand at the door and imagine her sitting at the desk, smiling as she always did. Her red hair was styled neatly, and her water bottle was just to the left of the screen.  Sometimes it felt unbearable. 

It was the kindness of my coworkers and the church members that gave me the strength to carry on.  They were so patient with me as I tried my best.   I stayed another five plus years after her death, and looking back, I’m grateful I did.  I cried many tears in a quiet office when I would discover yet another reminder of her, but those times became precious to me, holy even.   I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

After many prayers for God’s timing and blessing, we made the decision in 2018 to move.  We had a lot to navigate, and we still hadn’t decided where we would live.  So, in August, the weekend of my birthday, to be exact, Abbie and I decided to take a trip to Charlotte to see what we thought. I still remember posing for a picture before we left the driveway.  It was a mother-daughter doggie trip, and it took way longer than we’d expected.  There was a lot of road construction, and the traffic was more than we’d seen in thirteen years.  

Jeff was on reserve with his brand new legacy airline; he was flying high in heart and spirit, to say the least.  That week, he was called to fly to Charlotte, where he met up with Abbie and me.  We spent the hours we had together exploring and praying about whether or not this was the place for us. 

But, as time would tell, it wasn’t the place for us.  We didn’t have the peace we needed to call it home.

In so many conversations, a place we hadn’t thought about kept coming up.   Pilots who lived there couldn’t say enough good about it.  So, we decided to visit.  As it happened, we had a friend who lived there, and she graciously offered to let us stay at her house.  She volunteered to show us around and, because God knew exactly what he was doing, she was also a realtor.  That weekend turned out to be one of the most consequential weekends of our lives.  We loved the city, found a house, and decided this was the place for us all within forty-eight hours. 

We finally had the peace we’d been praying for.

We had a lot to do back in small town Alabama.  A house to sell, a job to put my notice in, people to say goodbye to, it all felt overwhelming.   We put our house on the market in the spring of 2019, expecting it to take a while.  We were stunned when the whole deal was done in three weeks!  We were still going through the process for our new house in Greenville, SC, so basically, we were homeless.   My dad and his wife, Lillian, offered us their spare rooms, and we took on the daunting task of deciding what to keep and what to sell.    The most important things were put in storage, and we lived with my dad for seven weeks.  Those days were precious to me because I knew they were numbered. 

When it was finally time to leave, we rented a U-Haul and put Greenville in the GPS.  Pulling out of the driveway in Brewton, knowing it would no longer be the place we called home, was right up there on the list of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.  I will never forget hugging my dad; neither of us wanted to let go. It hurt so bad to leave. I left them, my sister and her family, so many people I loved dearly, and my two sons, who were still in college.  I cried for the first several hours of the trip; it broke me. 

I still remember pulling into Greenville like it was yesterday.  It was storming harder than any rain I’d ever seen. I couldn’t even see the truck in front of me.  Jeff said it was a cloudburst.  I felt like it was a perfect picture of my heart.  The rain beat hard against the windshield; the wipers were pointless against it.  How appropriate to arrive in the rain, I thought.  It’s like the earth was crying with me. We inched our way to our hotel, where we would spend the night.  The next day, we would close on our new house, and literally overnight, we would start a new life. 

I wanted to be excited, and I think in some ways I was. 

But mostly I felt sadness and probably a bit numb. 

In the midst of it all, I knew that God was leading us somewhere good, even if my heart felt broken.

And just like times before, we were stepping into the unknown, and, like every other time before, we weren’t stepping alone.