We got word last week that we will be able to move to the Middle East with the Pirate for his next tour.

If you’ve read my first book, Found Art: Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places, you know that this region holds such deep soul significance to me. I cannot help but imagine what God may have for me there now, in this new season.

Additionally, last week something kind of extraordinary happened. I met with an agent (and his lovely wife) who is ready to represent me for book #2. This book will be deeply personal—the journey of emotional recovery that I have been on the last couple of years—and I am truly thankful to have found someone who believes in the story. It’s as if I’ve been in this tiny rowboat in the middle of the sea, and all of a sudden someone has stepped into the boat with me.

As soon as we are settled after the big move, I will turn my attention to spit-shining the proposal before it goes out to publishers. Pray for something amazing to happen. I’m trying to believe that the book might actually get picked up, and that I could actually write it, and that it might actually mean something to you.

I don’t truly feel any of this yet, of course.

What I do know is that I have some very difficult goodbyes to say in the foreseeable future, and I dread them. Every single one.

Yet, there is no greater prize than getting to be together as a family. I can give my kids no greater gift than following their crazy father around the world, so that he can come home to them every evening.

When I first started this blog, I agonized over what to call it. I got a lot of advice and input. Some solicited. Some not. Most of which I ignored, for better or worse. I decided to name it something I wanted to name it, something I loved. And I decided to give it a look I loved with henna and texture and aqua. All of this so that I would want to open it up and fill it full of my life. And now, the title – Gypsy Ink – seems so much more appropriate than I could have ever imagined.

This Gypsy is on her way. How wild.

I hope to be posting about our adventures regularly, though sometimes I may have to be a little obtuse for the sake of security.

As always, I hope that I will be faithful to give you a look into my soul . . . and by doing that, perhaps invite you to look into yours. What a beautiful journey we can make together. In that way, we are all gypsies, aren’t we. Soul travelers.