I couldn’t resist taking one more picture of our Georgia home as we closed it up and prepared to hand the keys – and mortgage – to its new owners. The sun was setting over the meadow beyond the second-floor veranda; a fitting metaphor. We had pulled out of that neighborhood to begin our new sunshine laden life in the spring. We didn’t expect it to feel like spring again when we finally sold the home place, but it did. A Delta pilot and his about to be bride got a great deal on our home, and we hope they feel as blessed and as happy as we did on Overlook Pass Road. The look in her eyes told us they probably will.

It was a weekend with several lines on the agenda. We signed our part of the closing documents – theirs took place about the time I was teaching Wednesday night. Afterward, Lisa insisted we celebrate by climbing Stone Mountain to survey the landscape of our life for the better part of two decades. We spent Saturday afternoon greeting friends and celebrating the impending birth of the baby girl Jordan and Anna have prayed and prepared for for so long. I spent that morning with my former staff and deacons and then we managed to hit all three worship services on Sunday. Lisa was glad to finally hear some good preaching from my friend Greg DeLoach. After hugging a few hundred necks we ate fried chicken prepared with love by our friends at Milo’s, just as we did on our so-long Sunday last March. Pretty full four days.

I’m a storyteller. If you know me, you know that. There is something in the narrative of life that ties all things together, gives meaning, marks journeys, and reveals our connectedness to what matters most. There is this thing about stories – they have chapters. When you turn the page, you don’t forget what you have read and enjoyed up to that point, but you do move on in wild wonderment towards the things yet unrevealed. So Sunday, we stood in the same place and loved on the same people as we did eleven months ago. In that chapter we all cried because something we treasured was about to be over. In this one, we smiled because it happened and knew what it meant, and still means.

After a brief overnighter at my mom’s, we pointed the Tahoe south and crossed back over the Howard Franklin Bridge. A few minutes later the U-haul bearing what was left of our worldly goods was parked in front of our suddenly singular home. It felt good. It felt right. Because being in Monroe and in St. Pete, different as they are, has one thing in common; they both look really good from the center of God’s will. Did there. Does here. And we expect it will for a very long time.