the last days

That's right, the last days. Not THOSE last days of 4 horsemen and all that other apocalyptic stuff, but my last days. Specifically, my last days here in PA. Its been great being here in PA for the past 3 years. Today I have my last day at work. Tonight we'll spend our last night in our house. Tomorrow, I'll walk out of our house, get in the moving truck, and drive away for the last time. And early Thursday afternoon, we'll leave PA and drive south towards VA. And this may be the last time I'll be in PA, maybe for a while, maybe ever.

A lot has happened here. We've had 2 kids. We bought and sold our first house. We made some amazing friends. We were a part of the best church that, up until now, we've ever been a part of. I shoveled snow for the first time ever (a real novelty the first time, but not so great after that). We bought our first minivan (making us official grownups - I knew that when I stopped drooling over pickup trucks and SUVs with large tires and high ground clearance and started looking almost exclusively at minivans that I was growing up).

Whenver I leave a place and go somewhere else, I think of what I will and won't miss. I will miss lots of things here - Blue Route Vineyard and all our fantastic friends there, our house, some aspects of my job, Rita's water ice, Iron Hill, Total Wine in Delaware. There are also things I won't miss - east coast drivers, east coast abruptness (otherwise known as rudeness, but I'm trying to be nice), having to buy beer by the case, some aspects of my job, etc. These are not by any means exhaustive lists.

Its hard for me to be extremely sad and look for closure right now. Partially since phone calls, Facebook, blogs, and emails mean I'm in almost daily contact with most people I know. But also, since Jo and I have been married, we've had big transitions every few years and this is just one more biggie. In brief,we came back from China in 2001 and got married. We moved to France in 2003. We moved to Morocco in 2004. We moved to PA in 2005. And now we're moving to NC. Jo and I just look at each other and say, "God please let this be the last big transition for a while, please?" We'd love for our kids to grow up in Chapel Hill. We'd love to really plant ourselves there and really invest ourselves there. We'd love for lots of things to happen.

So in these last days, 'mixed feelings' is definitely the way I would describe the way I feel. But as cliche as it may sound to some people, I find my greatest comfort in the promise of Jesus, "I am with you, always."