Transplanted

There were no oversized packets delivered, no “You’re In!!!” screaming from our mailbox. Even without the Facebook-worthy reveal, the result was the same: she’s in. Babita has a school. Now she just needs a year’s tuition up front and a visa.

Neither is a small task, but God has more than shown Himself faithful. We pray, we petition, we wait.

And meanwhile, we hunt.

When our family found its footing back in the States, we felt God’s whisper that this place, North Carolina, was where we were to pause. It didn’t make much sense, but then again … the list of things that were perplexing was plenty long. Why not add another? We spent just two short weeks in limbo before making home in a rental that has been the perfect fit for us as we’ve licked our wounds and grown strong again. We’ve learned, in our fifteen months here, how to spend weekend afternoons with extended family, how to feel Christmasy when it’s 60 degrees outside, how to revel in an early, beautiful spring. We’ve never felt it was forever, this place, and yet we’ve labored to drink deeply in this season because, like all seasons, we knew it was a fleeting second in the life of our family, and should be lived, fully.

But now, the door is being opened for a new season, a new place.

We began looking this past weekend. We put hundreds of miles on our van as we crossed the mountains into Tennessee, finding our way at last to the hills and trees and rivers that, a few months from now, will be as familiar as the shopping centers and highways of our current home.

We toured Babita’s new school, and pictured her roaming the halls, passing the gold-framed pictures of missionaries on the walls. It’s a good fit, this college. She will love so many of the unique specifics of academia here, love the culture of the entire experience in this setting.

Then we toured houses, and the whole thing seemed suddenly real. Is that my kitchen? Can I see us gathered in that room? Standing in the pasture of a small acreage, watching my children take their first rides on farm gates we might some day call our own…

It’s happening. We are being transplanted, again.

It’s not Washington. And it’s not Nepal. Those two places are written on our hearts, and maybe? Someday? Someday I would love to go home. And yet the chapter being written here, now, involves preparing ourselves to leave yet another place and even more people who have poured themselves into our story and made these past months that much richer. Leaving North Carolina will not be easy. There will be loss, and there will be transition. We will long for the faces we love, and the places we have come to know. But just as we were able to make this once foreign place home, we will do so again. This time, God willing, as a complete family.