On a scale of one to ten, how much do you love change? Even for people who embrace change, change causes stress. In fact several of the things on the list of what causes stress have to do with change — divorce, changing jobs, moving to a new home, moving to a new city, etc. Change is a stressor.
One of the reasons that change causes stress is that takes us into the unknown where we are unsure of what might happen next. You would think that as Christians we would have figured out right now that the Verse in Jeremiah 29:11 holds true always...
It says...
“For you know the plans I have for you” says the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Maybe you are not in a season of change right now, but if not, you will be soon. Remembering the verses above can lesson our stress significantly.
For those of you who have been following my life, you know that our youngest daughter got married on Saturday. It was a great day and I was so proud of all my adult children who were with us. This is a change though for all of us. There is one less Fletcher and an additional member of the family. We are now connected to our son-in-laws family in ways we haven’t been until now. It’s change.
There’s another change in the making for us as well. Yesterday at church, an announcement was read. It said that it is intention of the bishop to appoint Bart to serve the Boonsboro United Methodist Church in Lynchburg. This means a few things:
1). We are going to be saying goodbye to some amazing people at Mt. Vernon who have been incredibly supportive of us during the past very difficult months of our lives. We will miss them terribly but are thankful we will only be 90 minutes away. I’ve been driving that far to work a couple times a week so we can definitely meet half way for dinner!
2). We are all going to be under the same roof every night. Wilson, Dominyk, Jimmy, and Salinda and her family will be moving with us. We have found a home which will will be purchasing only 13 minutes from my office and 4 minutes away from the church. There will be more services and opportunities for the boys there in regards to finding employment and the mental health services needed. We feel like this will be a good move for them.
And since this will be our sixth appointment since we got married, we know that at Boonsboro UMC there will be some really cool people that we will get to walk with daily as we move into this new phase of our lives.
So, that’s our news. We come home from MN tomorrow (I’m working from a nice quiet hotel room this morning). The next couple months will be busy and full, but we have prayed for God to reveal His next step for us and so we will follow, believing that as He always has, He will work all things together for good!
