Three weeks.
That is how long we have left to live in our little town of Lititz. If you’ve been following my previous posts about this bigger than big plan that God has laid on our hearts (which you can find here, here and here) you will know that in less than a month, my family of five will depart our home on an adventure! And my, how God has opened doors we never imagined would be opened, when this all began…
First there was the calling… Just over a year ago, my husband and I felt that God had answered years of prayers with one little word: Hawaii. Neither of us had ever lived there, or even visited for that matter, and we certainly didn’t have any family there. But that location was repeatedly laid on our hearts and we were confident we’d received (numerous) confirmation that we should head there.
The only problem was, when?… There had never been a specific timeframe given in which we should go, so we did what any crazy-excited family of five would do when called to a tropical exotic location that people only dream of living: We set our own date. Our family and friends were informed that we’d likely be gone by end of 2015, and we even began to sell off our furniture. Except that God hadn’t actually given us a date to leave. So, when the end of the year rolled around and we had no urgency to leave we were… confused.
Then we finally had peace in our hearts for a date to leave… Spring. This was confirmed through various other sources (although the exact date in spring changed from early April to late May). But there was one single door God had ‘forgotten’ to open – a job in Hawaii. So, after much prayer, we decided to ‘think outside the box’. How might God get us there? Maybe a move in the right direction would be a good first step? Tim started applying for short term positions on the west coast and immediately had his ‘dance card’ full of interviews. Yes! Confirmation that we’d done something right!
And then came that moment when I needed to stop controlling the situation… Tim had accidentally applied for a long-term position and they were very interested in him. ‘Oh no! What if he was hired!’ It would be so hard for us to turn down a job (when he’d been applying for 9 months solid!) just because it would hold us in our temporary place for too long. We were supposed to go to HI, right? Right. But God is good, even to those of us who are a bit slow at times. He spoke to me through a good friend of mine: Don’t limit God’s plans. If He gets you to HI a little later than you thought, it doesn’t mean it’s not His will.
Whoa, hold up. Had I been limiting God with my assumptions?
Ummm… well, yes. Maybe I had. He had told us to go, but He’d never told us we would go straight to HI. In fact, it’s sort of the way He works, isn’t it? There are far more examples in the Bible of those who were given a ‘direction’, only to arrive at it in a round about way, long after they thought they would. (See: Noah, Abraham, Moses, and countless others.)
Maybe, just maybe, God has something to teach us in the in-between? Something that will be valuable to us, once we arrive at our final destination that He originally gave us? Yes. Yes, maybe this. Yes, very likely this. Eep. What if Tim had listened to me and not bothered to apply for some of these long-term positions just because I was hung up on the fact that we might mess up God’s plan of Hawaii? (Stop trying to close a door that God has open, Laura!)
Yesterday I was once again reminded of this idea – again in conversation with that same good (and may I please add wise?) friend. Tim is in the final stages of interviewing for a position in Oregon and the company has expressed interest to fly him out within the next few weeks. I was complaining how backward that seemed, since he’d fly out, come back, only to turn around and go right back out there again. She pointed out what a perfect opportunity it would be for him to check out some apartments for us, since he was already there. Oh wow. Right. That makes so much more sense than what I had planned. God’s pretty awesome like that, huh?
So, the moral of the story is: Don’t close those doors. Let God close them.
No, we still don’t know where we will live. No, my husband still doesn’t know what job he will have. Yes, we have 3 weeks left until his current job ends and we are officially homeless. But I will repeat the same mantra of the other blog posts, the same truth I’ve believed since day 1 of this venture: God knows and that’s enough.
That’s enough for us.