Because I believe that honesty and transparency are some of the most important traits a Jesus follower can have...
The decision is made.
Boxes are slowly starting to get filled, the moving truck has been scheduled, a route is being planned.
That's the easy stuff.
This decision to move home to California - with no job in sight and no grand opportunities on the horizon - it was a little easier than I'd expected in some ways, to be entirely honest. God has been preparing our hearts for a time now and we're moving home...home...and we're truly confident that this is God's plan. And we know that even though we don't see what's coming in our future, it will be good.
I'm confident in that.
And that post explaining it all - it was pretty good, right? Very together. Very confident. Very peaceful and mature.
In reality, I'm feeling anything but. I believe this is God's road for us. I believe that it's better to be in a bad situation and doing His will than to be in the greatest one the world can offer and out of it.
But...
I'm not sleeping.
I haven't been exercising.
Sugar has been my best friend (although the gluten-leaden foods I normally crave in times of stress continue to have no hold over me - thank God for small mercies).
I've had three cold sores come up in one week.
I'm prone to tears.
There's a For Sale sign on our house. I'm so not doing well with that.
I struggle with the knowledge that there are youth and adults that have been hurt by our decision to leave, just as I struggle with the hurt that we've felt by the callous and insensitive way the initial job shrinking and what's followed since was handled by our church leadership.
And I'm not even allowing myself to begin thinking about goodbyes. It's too hard. Too painful.
Some times, I'm angry.
Others, I'm frustrated.
But I've not once felt doubtful.
Which surprises me.
One big reason why is that this is all happening as we head into Tom's last semester of seminary...when we're so very close to that time when he'll finally have everything he needs to take that next big step in ministry.
As a friend suggested, I should be more doubt-filled if something like this weren't happening.
If anything, what we're going through now - and there's so, so much more going on than anyone really knows - it just confirms God's calling for Tom and for our family.
I've got so much simmering in my heart right now...so much that God is showing me...and I hope I can put it together in coherent ways to share here, if only for my own record but also because I think it will maybe speak to others as well.
"God is God. Because he is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to."
Elisabeth Elliot
(who just seems to have the perfect words for my heart right now)
Perhaps this post is just for you and those closest to you...but I have to say that it is profoundly uplifting for me...I've struggled for a few years now to hold onto my hope...so much of my life isn't even close to what I'd expected, planned for, longed to see. I have been focusing intentionally on the positives, on what is good about today, and only today...but deep inside is a simmering pool of "I didn't sign up for this!" and yet...yet...all around me there are significant changes in the lives of those I have come to respect and watching how they handle it has given me a new foothold, a new place to stand from which to view all that the last 5 years of my life has held...its amazing. THANK YOU!
Posted by: Felecia | December 14, 2010 at 11:09 AM