With all of the focus on our upcoming trip to Seattle to commemorate our 10th anniversary, I almost forgot that the actual day is tomorrow! Wow. It seems like forever and not long at all at the same time. It seems like we have done so much and yet not much at all at the same time. I guess the strangest part for me to ponder is how different our life is right now from how I might have predicted it to be. Since before Matt and I were married we knew that we both shared a heart for missions and desired to pursue that calling together. We did have several opportunities to travel/live overseas, yet it totally did not work out how we thought it would. And now we find ourselves living this very normal, fairly mundane life in little ol’ Zeeland. While on one hand we have grieved the loss of a dream, on the other hand our idea of what “missions” really means has changed immensely. I used to think the ultimate “living by faith” must mean to leave everything and go and do ministry for God in a foreign land. Now, I very much feel the need to trust God and rely on his grace to get me through each day... (lately, going through a particularly challenging season with the kids, it is quite literally an hourly plea, or even more often than that.) Many of my ideals and ambitions are having to die a slow and painful death. My place of ministry is small and not at all glamorous. Right now, living by faith for me means embracing this even when it feels like crap, allowing mySELF to be humbled and broken on a daily basis, and trusting that God can make something beautiful of it all. (The way I am feeling about things this week, believing this takes all the faith I can muster!)
Matt and I will often comment to each other that it often feels like we are going backwards instead of forward in our walks with God. I guess it depends how you are measuring it. Life is way harder than I thought it would be and it certainly seems that there are way more valleys than mountaintops. We have experienced God’s goodness in awesome and very personal ways, and we have also experienced months and years of wilderness and depression where He seems nowhere to be found. As I think back over our life together, there are so many joys and so many sorrows all mingled together. In hindsight, I can see God walking with us through all of it. Not that we are always good at acknowledging that at the time, but yes, he has been faithful and good.
While we are mostly just trying to manage our current demands of life & children, once in a while Matt and I will still wonder together what God has in store for our future. Ever since our harsh return from Australia, I have felt like I can only ever see like an arm’s length in front of us in terms of where God is leading. He’s had us in baby step mode for a while now. We wonder if life will ever take us overseas again, or if that was just a season. We’re still trying to figure out how God wants to use our lives for his glory... :) In the meantime, I guess we’ll just keep trying to take those little daily steps of obedience as best as we know how.
3 comments:
Congrats on the 10 years. A lot of us are hitting that mark this summer. Time does fly by quickly!
Keep trusting God's leading, even if in baby steps. There's a reason he only gives us one day at a time to live. :)
Val, sometimes the things that you say really just click with me. Thanks for sharing your heart on this blog. So much that you stated on this post is how I feel.... thank you. (I also never thought I'd be a Harry Potter fan.... I was convinced they were evil until a friend talked me into reading one....)
traci,
thanks. i do try to be honest but sometimes in doing so it feels like i am being too negative... so it's good to hear that you found it encouraging.
and, from reading your blog i learned that your anniversary is one day after ours!
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