Hello Dear Ones,

Today, I’m over the moon about sharing our #FromBostonToLA journey at SheLoves Magazine!

J_Osheta

As I write this, I am two weeks into a six-week separation from my husband. He recently accepted an associate pastor position in Los Angeles and since our family is based and bred in Boston, we decided a “staggered move”—where he leaves at the beginning of the year to get acclimated to the area and his new job then comes back to get us for a ten day cross country road trip before we start our lives in LA—would be best. We wanted to give the kids a chance to experience their last snow day and gather their friends together for one last goodbye. I wanted the chance to finally walk around Walden Pond and read something, anything, by Henry David Thoreau—a New England Dream I’ve never “had the time” to actualize.

When asked during our interview for the position if this was what we really wanted we were confident. Maybe, naively so.

“Osheta’s the most resourceful woman I know,” my husband promised.

“I want TC to have as smooth of a transition as possible,” I added.

And it was settled. A week later, the pastor called us and told my husband that he got the job. In less than two months, he’d be flying from Boston, leaving his job as a teacher for proven-risk teens to become a pastor of a church adjacent to Skid Row.

The kids and I watched him drag two suitcases through the sliding doors at the airport—one devoted to, and bulging with, all the books he couldn’t stand to leave—and my daughter immediately said, “Mama, you’re going to miss him.”

Which is why these past couple of weeks I’ve been leaning into Jesus as my Shepherd.

Join me for more encouragement on leaning into Jesus as our Shepherd over at SheLoves Magazine, will you?

Following Jesus in his zig-zag pattern of Shalom,

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