Moving our family of 7 back to France

In 2003, I moved to Toulouse, France as a fresh college grad, and now twenty years later I’m moving back with my husband and five kids. This is wild; I’m so excited. We are doing a one-year stint with Agapé (Cru)–I will be working in HR, investing in the staff women of France and Dave will be leading the campus outreach team.

Wednesday, we’ll be locking the doors of our place and getting on a plane. We’re in the midst of packing and sorting: give away, bring to France, pack away, still need for the next 5 days and the “please somebody, burn this for me now because I don’t know what to do with this” pile. My friends have been so helpful and generous in helping pack and taking our kids so I could pack. The thing with major life transitions is that there’s so many layers and each family member experiences the stress, losses and gains differently.

Some days are messy days: the chaos of the house, combined with significantly less sleep lately made me quicker to grab my crabby pants. Our kids are wearing their crabby pants more often too… There have been more “would you like to try saying that again?”, “I’m sorry” and “I need a hug.” That’s the repair side of things… and according to the Bible, we are going to sin (all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God), so getting good at saying, “I’m sorry I spoke harshly. Will you forgive me?” is an important part of walking with Jesus and others.

A few questions we get about moving to France:

Why only a year? Right now, we feel that’s all God is calling us to.
Will your kids go to a French school? Our kids will all be attending the same small bi-lingual school. Their lessons will be in French in the morning and in English in the afternoon. This is a big transition from homeschooling but in order to make friends and learn the language, attending school is the place to be.
What will you do with your house? We are renting it out furnished.
Will you be going back to Paris? Non, we will be living in Toulouse, which is in the southwest part of France. It’s a city that’s easier to navigate with a large family and there was a job opening there.

Overall, I am just in awe of how God has called us, opened the doors for us to go and the peace that I’m experiencing. It feels like spiritually God is calling me to a year of Jubilee. We have homeschooled our kids the last five years and this year of “pause” from that feels timely. I’m looking forward to learning to quiet my mind and soul again– to spend more time with God and hear his voice of delight more clearly. I’m looking forward to being back in a country that I love deeply; a place God has whispered so much love into my soul since I was 14 years old. He and I have some history in France. ; ) I am looking forward to investing in staff women’s lives and seeing where God takes things. I’m looking forward to hearing how God whispers His story of redemption, love and sacrifice to French students for the first time. There’s just so much to look forward to.

To the Author and Perfecter of my faith and yours! Cheers!

Here are a few photos from when we last lived in France, circa 2017-2015