Hello My Friends,
Have you ever stacked stones? It’s truly an addictive “sport”. Now wherever I go, if there’s stones, I spend some time trying to see if I can make a beautiful and stable structure by carefully stacking the stones atop one another. It’s quite a balancing act. Sometimes the stones you find just don’t want to stay together. Other times the stones just nestle together in such a way there’s almost no challenge to it, they just seem to mesh.
Life right now is a rather precarious stack of really lovely stones, and while I can’t get them to stay together and I can’t see how they will stay together, I am trusting that the Lord knows just how they are supposed to be.
It has been a long time since I last posted, but when life gets moving beyond a certain speed it’s difficult to slow down enough to share about what’s happening. So here’s a look at the “stones” that we are trying to stack:
1. Mike took a job as the pastor of First Presbyterian in Sharpsville Pa starting September 1 of this year! This is an answer to many prayers since they are REALLy excited to hire Mike and Mike is excited to be their pastor.
2. Sharpsville is not in Pittsburgh but an hour and 15 minutes north, so we will be selling our house and moving to Sharpsville, but when exactlyand how are still a mystery.
3. Sharpsville is in a beautiful area of western PA, but fracking and oil, gas, and mineral rights issues (OGMs) create a whole new set of challenges to buying property.
4. The kids are excited for the adventure of moving and terribly sad at the same time to be leaving Pittsburgh.
5. My parents are prayerfully considering relocating to the same area in the next couple of years, Yeah! but what and where and how to buy houses/land?
6. If we don’t sell our house in the next 3 weeks, then Mike may have to commute for the next nine months and the kids will stay in school here.
7. If we do sell our house, which isn’t actually finished quite yet (something else we are doing as quickly as we can) where will we go?
8. Packing up twenty years of life in Pittsburgh, leaving our network of friends and “family” that we have depended on and loved.
9. My cleaning business and all my great clients…
10. The consulting job I took on at the kid’s school PUCS (here in Pittsburgh), which I am responsible to get a pavilion built in the next three weeks…
This is a tall order!
Here’s the thing though, all “our challenges” are good things. Blessings and gifts. Our anxiety is that we would do well, that we would finish here with faithfulness, that we would start there with energy and creativity and listening spirits.
Pray for us as we seek clarity and wisdom.
p.s. Pray for my friend Byron’s dad, Andy, who was in a severe car accident and has severed his spinal cord. and for my dear friend’s daughter, Vivien, who at 13 went inexplicably blind and then (praise God!) recovered her sight; for the doctors to understand what happened and how to care for her especially if there are underlying problems that need treatment.
Thank you all so much!
<><Nicole