Moving
By Tonya Magnus
Small changes are not that tough, are they? Changing a pillow color, changing the car you drive, or even changing the color of your hair…but big changes that cause life to look different are much harder. Things like losing a loved one, changing your job or career path or changing where you live. This is about a past and recent life change that uprooted me. There are two times in my life that God has literally moved me out of my comfort zone and in to a “foreign” area. The first time was when I was about 35 years old and was living here in the OKC metro area where family, friends, work and my church resided. My husband, Doyle, arrived home and told me of a meeting with his boss who was asking him if he would be interested in moving to the Twin Cities area in Minnesota to open an office. I was so caught off guard with the news. Since geography was never my strong suit, I had to go find Minnesota on the map! I knew it was north, but I didn’t know how far north! I am a beach girl and moving to frigid, below-zero temperatures was not appealing! My first response to Doyle was, “And why would we do that?” He agreed, but God had another plan.
I put our two little girls to bed and sat down to read the Scripture that accompanied my Bible study class for that week. The verse was the very popular Jeremiah 29:11, but I read on to verse 14. God tells the people of Judah, who had been taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar to exile the land, that He would restore them to the place from which they were deported. God basically promised to bring them back to their homeland. Those words hit me like a ton of bricks, and as my heart sank, I knew that God was telling me to do the same thing! I found Doyle and said, “Honey, I think we are supposed to go,” and he responded, “I think so too.”
The following months were a whirlwind of all the things that come with moving so far from home. Two of our biggest prayers were that God would find us a good church home, and that he would move us to a neighborhood that had little girls for our girls to play with. When we pulled up in our new neighborhood in our big moving van, there were six little girls that met us wanting to know if our girls could come over to play. I just couldn’t believe it! Isn’t God so faithful to His faithful? And we had the best church home where we developed very strong friendships with several couples who are now lovingly referred to as “The Whale Pod” (since whales travel in groups), and about 25 of them just came to OKC for our youngest daughter’s wedding in June. Isn’t God so very faithful to His faithful?
The second life-changing call is happening right now! When we moved back to Oklahoma (as God promised), I prayed about the schools, and where God wanted us to live. We ended up living in Yukon for almost 20 years and built our dream home there, figuring that would be our forever home. Again, God had another plan.
It is a long story of how I became interested in a neighborhood near downtown OKC that lends itself to building a strong community of neighbors. God started prompting my heart and kept saying “love thy neighbor,” and I knew to what He was referring. I had talked to Doyle about going, and he said he wasn’t interested in changing our lifestyle from suburban to urban. I gave up on the notion and started telling God that He was going to have to change Doyle’s heart if He really wanted us to go. About four months later, Doyle randomly said he was open to checking into the new urban neighborhood. So here we are, two ALMOST senior citizens, and we are living the urban life. And you know what? We are loving it and thanking God for giving us the courage to do it and once again following his calling. Isn’t God so faithful to His faithful? Listen to his voice and then GO. Deuteronomy 32:4 says, “He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.”
Author Bio
Tonya met and married her husband, Doyle, at Council Road Baptist Church 35 years ago. They have two adult daughters and one son-in-law: Makenzie is the missions director at CRBC; Malorie is a social worker for Noble Public Schools, and her son-in-law, Jess, works for the OU foundation. Tonya is in her first year of teacher retirement from Yukon Public Schools where she taught for almost 20 years. She loves reading, women’s Bible studies, casual biking, traveling, hanging with friends at local coffee shops and entertaining. But the thing that brings her the most joy is hanging out with her family and her grand dog, May, who was found on May Avenue by her daughters.