My infamous picture box is stashed away somewhere in a bulging, freezing, catastrophic storage space in the freezing tundra that is northern Colorado. With it's absence I have no gorgeous picture from my photographer father's old 35mm Pentax to show you of a nostalgic old memory or visual to stretch some spiritual application from. No, the application and lessons of these past few weeks have been much more real-time and obvious.
I'm sorry for my silence over the past few months. In all honesty we've just been processing the reality of stepping through a door that God has opened which means closing one behind. In these seasons of transition I'm overly aware of the Biblical, realistic caricature of a sheep. That is me. I've never corralled a sheep, but I have chased a few cows and when they don't see exactly the opening they're supposed to head for, they don't stop, they timidly jump back and forth and clang and bash their horns on the corral bars and run into things. When moving cows I find myself not only annoyed, but embarrassed for them. Remembering that I am compared to sheep which are dumber than cows makes me embarrassed for me.
Two weeks prior to our scheduled departure date, Gabby came down with the flu/bug/sick/crap everyone in the USA is getting. Gabby's a passionate "all-in" kind of gal and her health is no different. When she catches something, she REALLY catches it. We're not talking a low fever for a few days, we're talking 103ยบ for two weeks. Numerous doctor's visits and literally pages of us charting her med schedule, she was released from the Mercy Stoddard Hospital (that's what I named our house). Days later we didn't really pack up, we just grabbed our stuff and chucked it in some diaper boxes, wrapped it in plastic and threw it into a Uhaul truck. The big kind. Then we put my wife's car on the trailer of it and drove away.
Not that leaving with everything working out perfectly would have been any easier, but the past month has just been crazy. The past three years in Michiana have been nothing short of a huge blessing to us. We had some really tough seasons, but they were some of the best, growing times for us. As Jenna and I walked through our house one last time to make sure we had thrown everything in, we had to stop, lean against the kitchen island one more time holding hands and thank the Lord. When God meets you: in a season, a place, a time when you needed it most because you were at your lowest, it changes you. I needed to be changed when we left Nashville and I'm thankful that God chipped away at me, worked the clay soil of my heart so He could mold me on the Potter's wheel. We made life long friends. Friends I miss right now.
Well Colorado welcomed us as it does everybody else with promise of being colorful. Growing up we always joked that it was a million shades of brown. We didn't care. We were just glad to be home.
Jenna's parents are over-saturating our kids with much needed Grandparent love. There is no replacement for that. I still feel blinded when I walk outdoors and am confronted by this massive, orange ball of fire in the sky that penetrates my retinas even when I close my eyes. I hear they call it the sun. It makes the snow look pretty.
We had a good Christmas. My first "event" at Calvary was Christmas Eve (no pressure) and the band did great and I was even able to shoot and edit this Christmas video of some of the pretty footage I see on my commute between Colorado Springs and north Denver.
Christmas Day was a day of fun for us.
Palmer started crawling yesterday which has given him a big head and he's started pulling himself up on things and throwing his water from the high chair. They grow up so fast. Gabby started calling me by my first name.
Thanks for keeping up with the Stoddards.
Collin
Miss you guys!
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