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This was the house.
Its walls no longer white but sandstone, but much of it the same
This was the house.
An oak porch now for shelter from the rain 
This was the house.
Pebble-stoned drive-way now cutting through the lawn
This was the house.
Where a part of me was born
Purchased ambitiously, business booming but change on the horizon we didn't see looming.
This was the house.
And we're giving it back now.
Lent for a while, for a reason I believe
This was the house.
A house we will leave.
And inside it, a family to one another cleave.
A life-time of wonderings and God's finger-prints impressing and in this house questions were answered
It won't be quite so distressing. It's stone and its wood and yes, all of it good, but it's time now to leave.

So our FOR SALE board goes up next week. And I will find a new school for the children and we will move to college for my final year and live in student accommodation. And the timing is quite tight and we hope to be out for September and the strange thing is I will then have the journey to do in the opposite direction. For two years I have commuted from Derby to Nottingham to study. I will commute from Nottingham to my Derby placement church. But I still have to study and harder than ever, having taken two years to do one year, I will now be like all the other final year ordinands, completing the last academic year in one year and training on placement as well. It will be very intense. And God never promised me it was not going to be costly. But I prayed for this, I think, and he is faithful. The calling seems to be all of ours now, not just mine and I hope you read that generously. It is that there are four people on board for this God-adventure and not just 'Rach doing her thing'. And we will all be together and that is what counts and we will not have any money but it matters far less. And so we step out, this family that used to have its ten-year plan. And we have no clue about where we will live in September or which school the girls will go to yet but we step out with lots of other people who have just got through their BAPs this month or are about to go and are doing exactly what we are doing, although we are one year in, laying down jobs and houses and following, just following, one foot in front of the other, just one foot in front of the other...