In case you haven’t noticed, I have a type-A personality. I like calendars and schedules and 401(k) plans. I bristle at change and uncertainty. I’m a control freak responsible adult.

I first realized my control problem when David and I were unable to have children. It took seven years for me to “give” my supposed control of our family to God.

In 2013 we refinanced our house and committed to serve God from our small home in Murfreesboro, TN. We abandoned thoughts of moving to East Nashville and buying a bigger house to fill with kiddos. We decided we could survive in the suburbs long term (although we are both “city people” who prefer mass transit to long commutes and next-door watering holes to chain restaurants). We found ourselves saying it would take “an act of God” for us to ever leave our church family whom we loved dearly and served faithfully and who edified us consistently. We had found unexpected contentment.

Two months later David’s job required us to leave that house and spend the balance of the year living in hotels in the Rocky Mountains. And while we were gone, the fabric of our Murfreesboro life frayed. God “sent out” our Life Group members: all but 2 families have moved to other time zones. Our church split. We had deaths in our families, cancer scares, and even watched an innocent man go to prison. We wondered why God had chosen that time to take us away when we thought we could have been so much help to everyone we loved had we lived in Tennessee.

In 2014 we made the move to Denver. We love Denver. We love the low humidity, absence of mosquitoes, Mountain time zone, 300 days of sunshine, organic lifestyle, and Broncos football (mostly because Peyton Manning “followed us there”). And the mountains–oh, the mountains! Our time here has been restorative. Colorado has quickly become home, and there is no place we’d rather be than here.

It may be new to us, but this beauty was built in 1906!

But we are leaving. Today is our last day in our condo. Today we are packing up everything the movers won’t take, and tomorrow we start the 18-hour drive to Chattanooga, TN, where David has accepted a new job. In Chattanooga we will be fulfilling our pre-2013 dream. We’ve purchased a 100-year-old house in a transitional downtown neighborhood. I’ll go back to my homemaker ways (cooking, gardening, volunteering, ladies-lunch-ing). We’re even growing our family! A basset hound puppy will join our party on January 31 when he’s 8 weeks old.

So I think I’m finally done with making plans and trying to control our future. We are starting to see our Denver years as God’s way of preparing us for this move to Chattanooga. What else could it be? No human would move 1.5 hours down I-24 from Murfreesboro to Chattanooga by way of Colorado.

Meet Copper the basset hound. He has “copper pennies” for eyebrows!

God has used our time in Denver to further strengthen our marriage and to solidify our priorities. We haven’t really put down roots here. We own no property. We were never able to “get plugged in” to a church for various reasons. When we leave, no one will miss us. And strangely enough that’s a very good thing.

We enter Chattanooga with renewed priorities. We look forward to becoming part of a community and having a healthy faith, healthy home, healthy food, healthy finances, and healthy relationships. We give control of it all to God, knowing He has an unfathomable plan when we let go of our own lives.

But I’ll be hiring the mosquito-control company myself next summer. It’s already on my calendar.