Greetings from GA!

Happy Friday everyone! Yes, I know it's been a while since my last post, but in the last two days I have driven from Baltimore to Charlotte to Atlanta to Kennesaw to Athens, where I currently am. Tiffany and I are in town for a wedding that she's doing the flowers for. After putting her on a plane Monday morning, I will spend next week at our house working on the final packing and sorting. Hamp will fly in on Thursday and then we'll load a truck and drive from the house for the last time sometime on Sunday probably.

I did want to share a couple of pictures with you from our sunrise Easter service in Baltimore. Once I was actually outside and dressed warmly, it wasn't so bad being up that early or feeling quite that chilly. I get the whole symbolic reason for having a celebration service at that time of day, but if we're going to insist of being outside at sunrise on Easter, I'm thinking that we need to be in Israel where it's warmer. Just a thought.......

This was the scene that greeted us as we walked to our car. Not a bad way to start the day, is it?



If you look closely at this picture, you'll see what's probably Venus, or the Morning Star, which I thought was an appropriate sight for Easter morning.



We met in a public amphitheater that's across the street from the Irish pub where we have Saturday afternoon services. We ate breakfast together first and then Ellis encouraged us for a few minutes from scripture. The sun looked really cool just coming up and I confess I wandered a bit to capture a couple of shots of the area as the service was getting started.











As I mentioned in the last post, the last couple of weeks have been difficult again for me emotionally. The drive to GA gave me some time to reflect and while I know this will be an ongoing process for a while, I think I'm closer to accepting that "it is what it is". If you've been around me much in the last two years, you've heard me say this a lot, but it's actually a very profound statement in its simplicity. I miss a lot of my old life and am still grieving aspects of it. But there are some exciting things going on for me and Hamp in Baltimore and in our kids' lives as well. Things don't look like I thought they would at this stage in our lives, but again, it is what it is. And because I believe that God loves me and has my best in mind, then I have to choose to believe whether what comes into my life is from His hands of love or not. Some days that's harder than others, but ultimately I believe that.

As I've whined about the city of Baltimore in the last couple of weeks, I became aware that God is indeed everywhere. He knew I needed reminders for my ambivalent self and I thought I'd share a couple of those with you. Whether it's in His creation,







musical expressions of His love,



or a young child publicly expressing his desire to follow His Savior through baptism,



He continues to show me His faithfulness and for that I am grateful.