Avocado Days

Our friend Val gave us a silly gift for Christmas: it is a miniature easel, about three inches tall. With it came three miniature canvas paintings that she had painted, each about two inches tall. One is of orange flowers. Another is what we call "art deco", which is a bunch of primary colored polygons.

The third is a painting of an avocado. That one is very murky colored.

I soon realized that Adrien was changing the pictures (as only one fits on the easel at a time) almost daily, but with no discernible rotation order. She explained to me that when she gets up in the morning at 5:30, as we are getting ready to leave for the commute to Dubuque (about 45 minutes), when she looks out the window, she tries to determine what the day is going to be like. She then sets the mini-art to correspond with what type of day it will be. The orange flowers are a bright and sunny day, generally a happy, fun day. The art deco is an uncertain day, where basically anything can happen. The avocado is a gloomy day, mostly referring to the weather, but also sometimes when the day itself is just a hard one.

Tomorrow is Adrien's last day at work. She really loves this place and it has been really hard on her. Leaving Dubuque has been a hard process for me as well, but it is harder to see Adrien sad. We have really had a wonderful time in our Wisconsin/Dubuque life for these past three years, and have been blessed to have gotten to know a ton of amazing people.

It's hard to move, even when it is to a good place.

This will be my ninth move, and fourth for Adrien and I in the past 6 years. I'm really looking forward to the prospect of not moving again for a while, of moving somewhere that doesn't have an end date before we even get there.

We are BOTH incredibly excited about North Carolina and all of the possibilities that lay ahead for us in there. Yet, that doesn't make leaving Dubuque any easier.

Adrien loves her job and the people that she works with, and we have made great friends. It is a really hard place to leave. We know that Mooresville is the place that God is calling us, and awesome things await us there, but we first have to get through the goodbyes before we can take comfort in the hellos.

Please pray for us, and especially for Adrien.

We've been having a lot of avocado days.