Thank you for your words of encouragement and understanding in response to my last post. After I hit “publish”, I almost went back and deleted it many times. I thought maybe it was too vulnerable, or needy sounding. But in the end, I want to be real, honest and an open book. So I kept it.
One of the reasons I hesitated to write it, and then wanted to delete it, is that I have posted over and over again how much we love it here, and I never wanted to feel like I was talking about of both sides of my mouth. But I’m learning to live in the grey area of life (Which I HATE, by the way), where you can love a place and grieve a place at the same time; where you can love making new friends and building new relationships, and still grieve and miss terribly the ones that you don’t get to do daily life with. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so discombobulated in my emotions.
But we really do love it here. I will try not to make this post too long, and it will probably lead to many other posts, but Scottsdale has been a big breath of fresh air to very weary souls.
The first question people always ask when they hear that we have only lived here a couple of months is, “What brought you to Scottsdale?” I usually just keep it simple. “We have some friends here that said we should move to AZ if we ever moved to America. So we did!” And that’s that. But really there is way more to it, and since it’s such a loaded answer, it’s hard to know where to start. Do I tell this perfect stranger about the almost 2 years we prayed for where to go? Or the 2 possible jobs that never materialized? Or the fact that we said, “We will never move to AZ with just a part time job.”, which turned into, “We will never move to AZ with no job!”, which turned into, “Pack the car, we’re driving across the country with no job and no place to live!!”. It’s hard to know how much story vomit this person wants during a 5 minute conversation at school pick-up.
But it really is so much bigger than Jay and I, and that is the hope we have, and truth that Jesus speaks to me in those serious moments of grief. I don’t really know why Jesus knit our hearts together over Scottsdale, why He gave us both a passion for this place and the church that He is planting here. But we are thankful, because it really is pretty great!
(Just a little collage of our favorite Scottsdale people/places/things. And I know you can get a margarita anywhere, but really, they’re amazing, so they always deserve a spot on any “best of” list.)
theparksfive 