The Other Side of the Rain

We're moving to where?

Oregon was home for forty years. Sure, I’d moved away a few times over the years, but life always brought me back to that little town I grew up in. My family lived there, my friends lived there, and we raised our kids there. What’s not to love, right?

Well, it rains a lot. In fact, if you asked anyone else, from anywhere else, what they think of when they hear of those little squares in the upper left corner of the United States known as the Pacific Northwest they would say, “It rains a lot.” They would be right. It does rain a lot. So, what happens after the rain?

The sun comes out after the rain! It might take nine months for it to come out in Oregon, but it will inevitably come out and it is glorious when it does.

The last few years living in Oregon my husband and I talked a lot about moving elsewhere. We were done with the rain and waiting for the sun to come out. We were ready for warmth and outdoor activities. We were ready to give up seasons, if necessary. We floated different scenarios for job opportunities and different locations, but we never could land on anything. The timing seemed off. Until it wasn’t.

The year 2020 hit like a freight train. For all of us, really. Ours started with attending Basic Combat Training Graduation for our son who had enlisted in the Army the previous year. Excitement to attend the celebration of boot camp survival! And what a celebration it was.

Returning home from that led to the ugly “C” word, but what also opened up was a possibility for a new job and a new location that we hadn’t been able to put our finger on the past few years. Florida. What?! The land of alligators, hurricanes and humidity? Nope. Nah-hu. I liked Arizona. That’s where I kept seeing us. Unfortunatley, the job offer wasn’t in Arizona. It was in hurricane alley. We had some thinking and research to do.

Long story short, we decided that God had opened this door and was nudging us to take a leap of faith. I say leap of faith, because we would be picking up deep roots and leaving everybody and everything we had known. We would be moving somewhere we did not know one single person. On its face, it’s scary. Behind the face, it’s terrifying! We had a son away in the military and a 27 year old special needs daughter who received very good services in Oregon. She had a good primary care doctor, questionable dentist, and a service provider that helped her be out in our community with her friends. Would we really be willing to give up the security and comfort of home to move to a foreign land filled with alligators?

I wasn’t sure that leap of faith would meet my 51 year old feet, until I stepped off the plane in Tampa, Florida May 2020. The warmth hit me right between the eyes. I knew then, in THAT moment warmth was missing from my daily routine. Almost instantly I felt better physically. I knew I was home, even before we found our new home later on this exploration trip made possible by the company holding out the job offer. It was a bumpy four days of searching the area and looking at homes that just didn’t fit what we were looking for. Until the last home on the last day. Even then, we weren’t in a position to make an offer as our home wasn’t even ready to put on the market, just yet. What we did walk away with was, we were ready to leap and knew in our hearts that the home God had picked for us would find us at the right time. So we lept.

I’ll be sharing more about this journey into a foreign land that came at the beginning of the “c” word (which is a swear word to me) and the obstacles, the tears, the loneliness, the celebrations, the visitors, the job, the new addition to our family, the travel, and the contentment we have found in the land of sunshine (which does have a lot of clouds and rain we hadn’t expected, but have come to enjoy).