I don't want to be a "nice" person!

AUGUST 7th!!!! No more planning, thinking, hoping, dreaming about moving to Colorado.  Our move to Colorado is becoming a REALITY as AUGUST 7th the movers will be here at our house to pack up our things, put them in a truck and drive them out to Colorado.  We don't have a home yet in Colorado so all of our things will go into a storage unit in Fort Collins so that we will be able to get to our things as needed.  In anticipation of the movers being here on August 7th, I find my mind frequently drifting back to the years that we have spent in New Hampshire.  We first moved here in September of 1993.  I was 41 years old.  Ed was 40 years old.  Yikes! That seems so young now!!  Our oldest daughter Karin was 15 years old, our middle daughter Meredith was 10 years old, and our son David was 8 years old.  I keep thinking about what New Hampshire was like when we first moved here.  There were several video stores in town where we could rent videos.  There was a small IGA grocery store in town that is no longer there.  Kearsarge Regional High School where our oldest daughter enrolled had no "classrooms" per say...everything was "open concept". The school bus did not pick them up directly in front of our house...they had to walk down the hill to the end of the road and walk back up the hill to get home.  In the spring they would run both ways because the mosquitoes would eat them alive if they walked! In winter during snowstorms, the man driving the town plow would give them a ride up the hill in the plow truck! I remember spending literally EVERY afternoon swimming at Lake Sunapee during the summer.  Our kids grew up in New Hampshire and so did Ed and I.  We are different people now then when we first arrived here from Connecticut in 1993 and for that I am glad.   I remember that Ed and I would have conversations about our faith and our Christian walk during our early years here in New Hampshire.  We would talk about what it would look like if Christians lived their lives completely on faith, and what it would look like if Christians loved others like Jesus loved them, and what it would look like if Christianity was more than being "nice" and having a "nice" family and going to a "nice" church.  We wondered how Christians should live their lives so that non-believers would look at the Christian life and truly see Jesus...not just a "nice" family.  We decided that we just didn't want to live a "nice" life but we weren't sure what that meant.  Well now we know because the movers are coming to our house on August 7th to move us to Colorado!!! We don't know where we will be living in Colorado but we will know what it means to live our lives completely on faith.  Since I was a young child, one of my favorite Bible verses has always been Provers 3: 5 & 6.  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight".  Now that I am 60 years old this verse is not just "nice" words that I have heard all my life but words that I am putting into action.  The moving truck is coming August 7th, I am leaving my home in New Hampshire to move to Colorado and I don't yet know where home will be in Colorado but I am trusting the Lord with all my heart, I am acknowledging him and I am trusting him to make my paths straight.  I trust that God will shine in my life and I trust that I will learn to love others as Jesus loves them and I trust that when non-believers look at my life that they don't just see a "nice" person but that they will see Jesus.
A not so nice person,
Anita Rennells