It's amazing what a year can hold!
Last year this time our family was living in a 37 foot camper while we worked at building our home and settling into a new community. We had arrived just a month prior to school starting and already it had been a tough transition. Now our girls were facing yet another school year in a new place, new faces, new everything. Apprehension marked their day as it did mine. Their thoughts drifted from questions like "what if I don't make any friends or what if I get lost in my new school"? Our one daughter cried often over leaving her best friend in our old town.
It seemed that tears often visited us on those days as we adjusted to a different "home" and lifestyle than what we were accustomed to. I worried about the girls finding friends and just how much they seemed to be struggling with this particular move. Our goal was simple: Build a house, settle our family and then begin work to launch a new church plant in our community.
It is good that God, in all his wisdom, does not reveal our future to us all at once. If I had known then, what I know now, I am not sure I would have wanted to answer the call God had placed so clearly on our hearts just two years prior. For the next 10 months we lived in that camper, all six of us, working hard to complete our home. We faced numerous trials, heartache and uncertainty. Not to mention a winter of snow unlike we had seen in 15 years. Only 6 months into moving to our new community, we had to make the difficult and painful decision to close the business we had owned for the last 6 years. We went from a steady job to no income within weeks. Still to this day I wonder how we have survived here the last 7 months. There is no reasonable explanation expect by the grace of God and God's people. I stand in awe of his continual provision for our needs and marvel that we are still here, in this place he brought us just over a year ago.
I ponder these things as I sit here this morning on the front porch of our new home, just having returned from dropping my children off to their first day of school. Our three youngest to the elementary school and our oldest to her first day at middle school. In contrast to last year, this year our girls head off with great excitement and great expectation of what this year will hold. They are eager to meet up with old friends and promising to keep an eye out for anyone that's new so that they can welcome them. They still remember what it felt like to be "the new kid on the block".
Michaela, our oldest, takes a big step into 6th grade this year. I think I had a harder time seeing her off then when the girls went to Kindergarten. One one hand she seemed so grown up all of a sudden, jumping from the truck with a brave face as she waved goodbye to me. On the other hand, she seemed so small walking into those huge buildings that tower over the hills they rest on.
Letting go is hard to do, no matter if it's sending your children to school the first time or moving to a new place. Letting go of the old to embrace the new takes work and can be painful too. Relationships change, life is different, routines shift and we have to re-define where we now find ourselves.
This is where I find myself these days. Working through changed relationships, a different routine and re-defining what God has for me. Yet, maybe it's not re-defining so much as re-affirming what God has for me here, in this new place.
This morning I was reading in Job 19. Here is a man who has been stripped of all that he had known, all the things that God has previously blessed him with. He is a man that is struggling to understand, to come to terms with where he is now. And yet, in the midst of all that is no more in his life, there is one truth that never changed even though his circumstances did. That truth is found in Job 19:25 "But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he will stand upon the earth at last. "
Even though Job, at that moment, was struggling to understand where the Lord had brought him he was able to speak with assurance to the naysayers " I know that My Redeemer lives" !
Amen!!! and Amen again!!
No matter all that has been lost and changed and altered in my life this last year I too want to be able to say, with all assurance, that "I know that My Redeemer lives" and I will rest in His promise that He is the same "Yesterday, Today and Forever" (Hebrews 13:8) For me, there is hope on the horizon. I can feel it coming!
Take time to Reflect on Jobs life. Allow God to help put in perspective the things happening in your life today. Where do you need to say "despite what is happening in my life, My Redeemer lives"?
Then take some time to reflect on Philippians 4:6-7 that says:
"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made know to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your mind in Christ Jesus."
Living Life on Purpose for His Purpose,
~Victoria
