It’s truly hard to believe that exactly one year ago, on November 11th, 2012, we became Floridian’s!!! To be quite honest if I could have seen the difficulties that change was about to bring I probably would never have left the comforts of home!!  I would have chosen to stay in my lovely, comfy, and familiar birthplace and home-place of little Scioto County!!  I think Jeremy and Mariah would agree, however, Mason says he’s never leaving Florida!!  😉

Yeah, I know what you all are thinking!! Your moving to Florida, you’ll be living near the beach, you’ll be enjoying beautiful weather year round and be an official beach bum!! Sounds perfect, right??   Fortunately,  Jeremy and I didn’t have those expectations!! 😉  As anyone knows moving, even locally, is stressful and change is difficult but moving to a new area 700+ miles from our little home town wasn’t easy for this small town family!!! Yep, even the beach couldn’t calm all those nerves!! 😉

Day one of moving brought lots of change for us, but we jumped in head first with eager anticipation looking forward to all that was in store!! Like making new friends, new church, new school, new job, and creating a new life for our little family!! Of course change meant stretching ourselves outside of our comfort zones and participating in lots of social functions!!  I mean we had to get “plucked into the social pipeline”!! (In case you’re unfamiliar with the quote it is from one of mine and Jeremy’s all time favorite movies “Dumb & Dumber”) At times that’s exactly how Jeremy and I have felt this past year!! LOL  However,  let me be clear on one thing I may be dumb but I’m not dumber!! 😉 Joking!!!

However, change is unfortunately something we can not avoid and it’s no stranger to any of us!  It usually requires or forces us to step completely outside of our comfort zone and take a giant leap of faith!!  In a book I’m reading called “Beloved names of God” it explains life change through the analogy of God as our Potter and we are His clay:

“In a similar way, we can theorize that the clay on a potter’s wheel would probably rather stay in the ground.  Instead, it is dug out, processed, shipped, sold, soaked, beaten, stretched, and manipulated on its way to becoming something useful-or perhaps even a work of art.  The Potter puts us on His wheel of life and forms us according to the true purpose from which we were created. It may be a messy, difficult process, but we can trust our Potter to build us up to our full potential.” ~   Beloved Names of God

Sure, life would be much easier if we could just “stay in the ground” where its comfortable and cozy and not much is required of us!! By staying “in the ground” we can go about living our “comfortable” lives all the while missing out on what we’re truly capable of accomplishing!! Things that we can only accomplish if we allow the Potter to “dig us out” and “stretch us” for His purpose!!

This past year our little family has felt “stretched”, “dug out”, “beaten”, and even “manipulated” due to our ever-changing circumstances but to be honest we wouldn’t trade it for anything!! I’m thankful that we couldn’t see the difficulties ahead because we would have chosen to stay comfortable and then we would have missed out on being molded on the Potter’s “Wheel of Life” for His greater purpose!!