Never say never

When will we learn to just stop talking? Here's some background you may or may not already know. When we first got married, and probably even before, I took every opportunity to try and explain to Kel how Corbin was actually the center of the universe. It's pretty apparent, if you stop and think about it. If it takes 6 degrees to get to Kevin Bacon, it should only take 4 to get back to Corbin. Since Kel was not from there and was not ready to accept this idea, she boldly stated on several occasions: "I will never live in Corbin."

That's all it took. We soon found ourselves moving into our first house -- in Corbin, of course. Also, predictably, she loved it. We had some great relationships with friends, a great church family and lots of opportunities to serve. Work was going very well, but there were some connections at work to Louisville. Again, some careless statements were made: "If we ever move, I'd love to go south. I wouldn't want to go any farther north, and definitely not Louisville . . ."

You'd think we would learn. Of course, we soon found ourselves hauling all of our stuff, and our now larger family with Ally, into another house -- in Louisville. We plugged into a great church and formed amazing new friendships. Along the way, we've added two more sons to our traveling circus of a family, and even though we really had no prior connections to Louisville before, we felt very settled. At this point, we were aware of the pattern. We even jokingly said a few times: "I'll never live in Hawaii . . ." But even at the same time, without a second thought, we would say to each other: "As much as we miss friends and family and all of the familiar things about Corbin, we know we'll never live there again. There's just no way. I mean, how could we?" And we absolutely believed it. 100%

For the record, I'm currently sitting parents' living room -- in Corbin of course. "Work" has brought us back again, and at this point it is still very surreal. We're back for the forseeable future, whatever that means. I guess until we foolishly and boldly make some statement as if we actually knew what the future held.

This is interesting though: Before we were pregnant with Drew, we were having a conversation with my cousin when she asked if we were open to having more children. The last time Kel and I had that conversation ourselves, the answer was a pretty firm "no." When she asked, however, without hesitation we both answered "yes" at the same time with no hesitation. We looked at each other, completely surprised, and began to realize that God had been quietly working on us and we were being prepared for Drew who came along not long after. I think the same thing has been happening to us lately. I can look back and see a desire for things that I always associated with "home." You don't have to look far, the last post on here speaks for itself and that was long before this opportunity was ever presented. Don't get me wrong, we were extremely happy where we were, and it has been/will be extremely tough to leave. Even a few weeks ago, I would have laughed at the thought.

But I cannot imagine having never met Drew even though his arrival was a great surprise. So I'm excited to see what God is preparing us for here -- again.

-Jeff