We (Finally) Moved!
Six months ago, when we wrapped up the holiday celebrations and the calendar reset with the start of a new year, I had a feeling in my gut that this would be our year. Even as the snow started to melt and the faintest hint of Spring sat in the cool air, we still didn’t have any official confirmation with our moving situation, yet I had this air of hope in my heart. It’s hard to describe, but I just felt that at any moment, our path would be cleared and we’d be able to move to our new home and our next chapter.
When we first made the (big) decision to make a significant change in our lives by selling our home in Ontario (Canada) and moving to Virginia (USA), we expected that we would be tying up the loose ends of that chapter and would immediately start writing a fresh one. Little did we know that there would be such a significant amount of time spent in the in between, with one foot out the door and one still firmly planted within. With plenty of resistance, we eventually learned that life doesn’t exactly happen in perfectly succinct chapters. There’s a lot of this and a little of that and interwoven webs of overlapping layers that end up being just a little bit messy. So much life still happened for us in the messy in between space and now that we’re on the other side of it, I can see the way the Lord was present with us through it all. We aren’t the same people we were when we first made the decision to make such a significant move 3 years ago.
Now that we are officially in our new home, I thought it may be helpful to share a little bit more of the “story”. I’ve written time and time again about our season of waiting, so it may be helpful to finally give some context. Three years and three months ago (in March of 2022) Curtis and I made the decision to move our little family to Virginia. This was a significant decision - Curtis went to college and then worked in Virginia after graduating and knew he wanted to move back, but when we met and decided to get married, I told him that living away from my family would never be an option. I was born and raised just north of Toronto, Ontario, Canada and have always been extremely close with my family. I never imagined myself being far from them. Curtis was always really patient and understanding, willing to sacrifice his preferences, and never pressured me to change my mind. However, as time marched on, my heart began to change as our family grew and Curtis and I began to take more seriously the role we have in shepherding our children. It never happened on a whim, but for very many reasons (too many to lay out here!), we eventually hit a place where we felt that a significant move would be beneficial for our family and it didn’t take long for us to settle on Virginia.
Within a week of making our decision, we began my immigrant visa application. Curtis and both of our girls are U.S citizens, but I am not (at this point Franny wasn’t even born yet, but she also got her citizenship when she was born). I was the only one who required additional paperwork and I wanted to make sure I could get permanent residence before actually entering the country to avoid any potential issues down the road. We didn’t know what to expect with the timeline of the green card process, but we really took our time to pray over and contemplate each step involved in this change, like when we should tell friends and family, when we should actually sell our home, and whether we should jump into buying a new home or just seek a place to rent until we had a better grip on where exactly we wanted to live.
This season of active decision making was really shaping for both Curtis and I. We both grew individually, but also as a team. I appreciate how the Lord used us both with our unique gifts and personalities to bring balance to our decision-making for our family. I learned to really lean into the Holy Spirit’s nudging and how I often hear Him speak to me, while Curtis brought a wonderful and much-needed sense of practical insight and stability to each step of the process. We gained a whole new appreciation for walking by faith and not by sight, taking just one single step forward as the Lord directed. It was not easy or painless, but when we look back now, we can see how faithful and gentle God was with us.
The immigration process is not easy to navigate. Curtis was diligent in fulfilling each request as promptly and thoroughly as possible (he’s really gifted in this area), but the entire process is not clearly laid out from the outset. We had no idea what to expect in regards to a timeline, but despite the unknown, we felt a nudge to proceed with listing our home in August of 2023. That entire piece of the puzzle was the hurdle I was dreading most - if you’ve followed along, you know how much comfort and enjoyment I find in living in and working on our home. However, on a visit to Virginia in June of that year, a home unexpectedly fell into our orbit and we had the opportunity to view it and privately make an agreement to purchase it. We didn’t plan on buying a home so quickly, but it happened very peacefully and organically with very little active pushing on our part. In retrospect, I can see this part of the story as a small mercy. It made the process of letting go of our beloved home of the past four years much easier when I was able to visualize where we would be going to next. We listed our existing home for sale in August 2023 and two days later, I received my visa interview appointment date for October. The interview at the Montreal consulate appeared to be the last step in the process and the timing seemed really affirming.
Our home in Canada sold within one week with a quick closing date. We spent the next month scrambling to get all of our belongings packed into a moveable storage container and moved ourselves with a few personal belongings into my in-laws townhouse. At this point, my final interview date was only a few weeks out and we figured we could make do in this in between space for a few months as the final stages of my paperwork were wrapped up. Little did we know what was in store for us.
We all travelled to Montreal in mid-October 2023 and I attended my interview. This is the type of interview you see in movies where you are asked about the validity of your marriage and the plans you have with your intended move. However, it’s much less intense than the dramatized interrogation room with a single spotlight and a speedy line of questioning often seen in the movies. They don’t tell you that it’s actually quite pleasant and purely administrative. Everything went smoothly except for one minor detail and that (very) insignificant detail ended up holding up our entire process by one and a half extra years.
I want to protect our family’s privacy and so I will not disclose the minor detail, but to put it simply, it was something you would roll your eyes at if I told you. This small detail required an extra step on our part and it ballooned into hiring a specialized immigration lawyer, submitting an additional application, and waiting in a queue with an estimated 22 month waiting time (and growing by the month) for the additional application to be reviewed. It was such a discouraging part of our journey and left us sitting in a place of unknown like I had never experienced before. We tried any and every additional means possible to see if we could have this application reviewed sooner, but to no avail. To make matters worse, we closed on our new home in Virginia in October of 2023, yet I was advised not to travel to the U.S. while my application was awaiting review. All the while, we were living in a very small space that wasn’t even our own with two kids in tow, all of our personal belongings sitting in storage, and no specific end in sight. It was all very humbling and very difficult, yet also a period of immense personal growth.
I couldn’t even recount to you the number of times we questioned our decision in the midst of this unexpected waiting period. The road block ahead of us was so silly, yet such a clear blockage with no way around it that we wondered if the Lord was trying to tell us that we weren’t supposed to be making this change. I likened this period to what I imagine the Israelites felt as they wandered the desert - up until this point, we so clearly felt the Lord directing our steps and faithfully carrying us through, but all of a sudden, we felt like all we could see around us were miles of miles of sand. If I’m being honest, I felt very discouraged. We had already made some significant decisions and steps into the move and so backtracking was unimagineable, yet we couldn’t get our bearings enough to take any sort of step forward. We really had to just set up camp, settle in, and rely on the very real experience of God’s faithfulness in the past to keep pushing us forward in trust of His faithfulness in the now. In the moment, we really couldn’t see it.
Total surrender to being present where we were was the best decision. So often we found ourselves dreaming of what was next that we almost missed the present moment, but this entire experience taught us how beautiful it is to truly be exactly where you are, no matter how imperfect, temporary, or insignificant it feels in the moment. So much life - both beautiful and heart-wrenching - still happened in the years between when we made our decision to move and when we actually arrived. Our daughter started and finished kindergarten with her best friends, we lost my Dad, we had a few family health scares and hurdles, exciting changes happened in Curt’s workplace, we made unexpected and wonderful new friendships, we lost a precious baby, people spoke into our lives with visions and words of encouragement, and we got to continue to experience our church through a significant and exciting change. It didn’t always feel like it, but when we reflect back, we really can see that God was with us through it all and His (many) small mercies carried us through. At any moment, the path could be cleared and we could make our move; yet we were constantly reminded of how important it was to live in the present and rooting in to wherever we happened to be that day.
In August of 2024, we unexpectedly got the clearance for me to be able to travel to the U.S for short-term travel, even though my application was still not reviewed or resolved. We were able to visit our (very empty) house for the first time since seeing and purchasing it and this gave me the opportunity to start to dream a little bit about it. This small change felt like such an olive branch for our longing hearts and we continued to take a trip down every few months.
In March of 2025, exactly 3 years after we began the entire immigration process, the small detail that originally held us up was quietly and instantly dropped. Literally just like that. My additional application was never reviewed. We had to backtrack a little bit administratively, but relatively simply and painlessly, I received my green card on June 5th, 2025 and we moved on June 29th, 2025. We got to celebrate our first Fourth of July later that week.
In some ways, maybe we did wrap up that first chapter and start a new one, but we just so happened to write a bonus chapter right there in between. It was messy and scrambled, full of doubt, tears, many prayers, and evidences of a very faithful God who is present even when you don’t always feel it, but it has maybe been the best one we have written yet. I hope that one day I may be privy to what God’s plan was in having us sit in that wait, but I also think I’m content to just trust that it was for His Glory even if I don’t understand it. We know He’s up to something good and we can’t see what is in store for us in this new place.
I hope you’ll join us as we start this new chapter in this new place. We have a pretty substantial home renovation well underway and I already have many DIY projects drawn up in my home journal just waiting for me to get my hands on some tools. It may not all be in an instant, but I’m excited to dig in and be present with exactly where we are when we’re there. More to come!
