Today is the day we leave our month-long stay in Dallas and head back to real life at home in Virginia. As you read this, I’m either slicing apples and packing almond butter sandwiches, or maybe I’m 30,000 feet in the air with a baby squirming in my lap, but know this: my heart is heavy.

Dallas is a special place for us. A year after O and I got married, we came to Dallas on business. He had just been released from the Philadelphia Eagles with a hamstring injury and had dove head first into professional investing. Friends of ours had some amazing opportunities here, so we hopped on a plane the next week (as we used to do often, pre-baby) and made the trek to the Lone Star State. My Dad is from Houston, my parents met at Baylor and we made life-long friends here that kept us coming back at least once a year. Dallas feels familiar, nostalgic and comfortable. O’s family all lives between Canada and Detroit and at the time, my family was all in Minnesota. But for some reason, when we walked around a park downtown and sat in the Texas sun, O looked at me and said “We’re gonna live here one day.”

If anyone knows my husband, they know he doesn’t throw words around. He’s not a dreamer with his head in the clouds and he is as calculated as they come-when he speaks, he means it and I believe him. We didn’t talk about it again, but continued to do business here and grow our assets in Dallas. When my parents announced in 2014 that they’d be moving to Dallas in the summer, our ears perked up. The timing didn’t feel quite right, but we certainly felt something.

We spent 8 months here last year to test the waters and see if this was it- if this was the time. If this was the place. And while we didn’t feel a definite Yes or No, when we pulled up to our home in Virginia after two long days of driving and reflecting, it didn’t feel like home anymore. It was like coming to a place you spent so much time in as a child- dreaming and reminiscing all the while- only to return to it as an adult and think, “this was it?” It seemed colder. Lonelier. Somehow more flawed than we realized. And suddenly, Dallas felt right.

So here we are again, in the same spot of waiting and wondering. We moved to Virginia because we signed a 5 year contract with the Redskins. O was hurt within 5 games of that first season and released when it finished. There were technically no ties to our home or life there, but man did Virginia make an impact. Our church home, our mentors, our friends, that fall air, the Christmas snow, the farms and fields and forests…it’s a hard place to choose a goodbye for.

We have been in the in-between for years and everywhere we go, we’re met with the same question. “Are you staying or are you going?” So if you’re wondering, we are too. We’re prayerfully waiting for His leading and our direction, but for now, we’re left with goodbye again.