It has been said that you should never look back. In order to go forward, however, I must first go back.

My husband, our two daughters, and I lived in a three-story duplex in a nice section of the city. Our daughters were in their late teens when God started leading us to the nations to add to our family. After journeys of faith to China, Thailand, and Vietnam (we did not know at that time there would be a second trip to Vietnam), we were now a family of seven.

When our first-born were launched, we started feeling a tugging to move out of the city to a place where our young children could have a place to run and play. A very small city lot hardly fit the bill. So, in January of that year we put our house on the market.

I lost track of the number of showings we had, but our real estate agent said it was about 100!

By December the house still hadn't sold and we planned to take it off the market. Our agent called to ask if we would agree to do one more showing, and we gave our okay.

Christmas week we had a signed contract! The clincher was that our buyers wanted to be in by the end of January.

We began a frantic search for a new home in a limited market of the winter months. Nothing we found was suitable - we saw houses with obvious water damage, ones on busy roads...something we wanted to avoid with a deaf child and our beloved pets.

In my online searches, I kept coming across a property in the country about 40 miles from our city home. I continue to cross it off our list because it was just too far away from our family, friends, and our church.

God, however, must have had another plan. We agree to see that country property. The drive seemed long, but once inside, the house seemed perfect, almost tailor made for us.

After qualifying for the property (something which both surprised and amazed us) and overcoming the hurdles our buyers were having with their financing, we finally settled in early February of that year, just a week before being hit with a major blizzard. We were homebound in our year-round mountaintop retreat, which we call Acorn Acres (yes, we do have lots of oak trees), for three days. We learned quickly about being prepared - being snowed in was a reality - and it was important to stock up.

This brings me to reflections from the mountaintop.