Coming Full Circle

Mark Thomas photographed the skyline as we approached Dallas.

This move is like coming full circle. I have lived in a lot of places and several different states both as a child and as an adult. But I was never more upset to move than when we were transferred to Kansas from our home in Plano. My Father worked for J.C.Penney and my two sisters and I were more than familiar with the drill of moving and adjusting to new surroundings. However when we moved back to Plano for the second time we were told that we would not move again.

Sadly when I was in eighth grade that turned out not to be the case. We moved to Topeka, Kansas and my parents stayed there for nearly 12 years. We all loved living in Plano, we had a lot of friends, attended a great school and the sports, mainly soccer were awesome and continuing to grow at the time. Topeka for the most part seemed pretty awful at first. We were used to a sprawling city and when my parents took us to Topeka, my Dad showed us the store he would open at the new mall, it was on Wanamaker Road, we drove a little further down that same road and our new house was being built, and then a little further down that same road and there was the middle school, and then again a little further, the high school I would attend. It blew my mind that everything was all on the same road! We all eventually found friends there and adapted to our new surroundings but our hearts were somehow always still connected to Texas.

I graduated from high school in Topeka and longed to return to Texas, applying to Texas Tech and TCU among other schools. I was offered a scholarship at Texas Tech, visited and liked the campus but in the end was not quite ready to be that far away from home so I decided to attend Kansas State University and stayed there for three years. After my second year, I again visited Tech and even looked at apartments but again the timing was not right. I was involved with Campus Crusade for Christ and participated in two summer beach projects. One summer living in Panama City and the following summer living in San Diego. In San Diego one of my roommates went to the University of Alabama and I decided to visit her over Labor Day. I fell in love with the campus and decided to visit again that January over Winter break. I fell in love with something, or rather someone else during that visit!

Mark had just transferred to Alabama from the University of Pittsburgh. We began dating over Spring Break when I visited again and from there on things were a whirlwind. I spent part of the next summer in Italy, where we wrote letters to each other and learned how to communicate through the mail. Those letters are treasured possessions of ours. I transferred to Alabama that fall and we were engaged and married by the next summer.

My history of moving did not stop when I went to college. Mark and I have lived in several states too and those moves were both wonderful and hard. I fell in love with a part of the country I had never been to. The Northeast is beautiful and I loved living in New York so much as did the kids. But it was hard being so far away from my family. They slowly returned to Texas and were all within 45 minutes of each other for years. I'd call and they'd all be in the same house over the holidays and I'd long to be with them.

We moved to Beaumont three years later after I attended the funeral service for one of my cousins. I listened to people talk about him in a way that I simply did not know him and it was because we did not live that close to him while we were all growing up. I did not want that for my children. Beaumont was a short 5 hour drive from my family and we saw them so much more than we ever did during the first 10 years of our marriage.

Well, now God is taking us back. When Mark received a call from the APNC in Plano we were so surprised that God could actually be taking us that close to my family. Strangely enough Mark prefers the climate down here and I still long for the Northeast but being so close to my family is a concession I would gladly make. As I drove down here last week with a trailer and the kids in the truck I felt a strange sense of completion in bringing them back to a place I loved so much as a child. Our two oldest children are in middle school and Max is going into 8th grade. The grade I had just finished when we left Plano.

It is such a gift that we'll be close enough to see my family so often. I love that the kids will be able to be here in such a great area for schools and sports and that the church that God has called us to will be a place where they can grow in their faith. We have not yet been able to visit the church as a family because we're awaiting some final steps through the Presbytery but there are so many things we're excited to become a part of in this new journey.

So although we'll live in Prosper, Plano, my old stomping grounds will be where we'll spend a lot of time at the church and with the people who live there and in the surrounding area. This growing metroplex is not going to know what hit it when the Keffer Crew arrives in full force! We hope to be settled by the end of July and will be ready to get into our regular routine the second week of August. God is good, all the time and we're very thankful for the provisions he's put before us allowing us to partner in ministry with a wonderful congregation while being so close to my family.