Do You have the Keys??

Okay...so we head out of the house to go list our house for sale in the local paper. Our good friends David and Dacia also called to meet us for lunch. So we anticipate a good lunch with friends listing the house and then back to clean, clean, clean. I stepped out the door first and bent over to tie a sack of trash. Andrea follows next, locks the door and - bang - shuts it.

"Do you have the keys?", I ask. "No...don't you?" Why is it that even though you have two spare keys sitting around, you never give one to your neighbor until after you have locked yourself out? I chose to look at it positively. We got to meet a very nice man from the locksmith shop.

So we put an add in the paper today to sell our house. Reality check number 113 that we really are doing this thing. It is not just a dream. We will hit that end of March deadline quicker than we realize. We plan to move to be by Andrea's parents then so she can be close to them (and only an hour from mine) while I go to CHOBC. So for the rest of today and tonight we will clean, clean, clean. Anybody want to come over and help? ; )

Of course, listing the house for sale means we are one step closer to actually leaving, and that means we are one step closer to having to say goodbye to all of the dear people in the church I pastor. I spoke with one of these members today: Sue. She expressed lovely sentiments of sorrow at our leaving and appreciation of our ministry here over the last seven years. She got teary eyed; I got teary eyed. It is hard. I know, however, that God is leading. The thing she said that touched me the most was this: "We are not sending you away. We are sending you out as a missionary from us. You will always be part of us."

I say: "Amen."