On BE-ing, Crisis of Faith and a Journey Unfolding

Get back to the first word you heard from the Lord, and follow it.

That has been my mind’s cry to my spirit lately. We are “all in” in this journey and with that comes challenges. And boy do we have some challenges! In the midst of those challenges, we rest on an unwavering God, who hasn’t changed His mind about us.  He loves us…plain and simple.  And as a Good Shepherd, He is leading us. We know that we know that we know His voice.  And He is bending low to feed us–to gently guide us on toward the next destination.

All this, I know and believe.  And yet upon our first big bump in the journey last Friday, I caved.  “Lord, did you really say this?  Why are we doing this?? It would be safer to stay here. What if… what if…. what if…? Can I just say never mind?”

I’m so glad I have taken Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God and facilitated it over the years.  I know that there is a God-sized task before us.  I understand that there will be a crisis of belief–a place where we question it all. And in that place, I know to be very quiet and to pray.  I know that in that place I must choose joy.  So I have been wrestling it with the Lord.  And I’ve been pretty quiet.  There have been plenty of tears (all kinds of tears–sad, concerned, anxious and even happy ones)…and lots of prayers.

But each and every day, I have continued to do the things required to ready our house for sale.  My actions spoke louder than my doubts!  Then yesterday we hit a similar big bump, and this time?  This time I was disappointed, but not overcome with fear or anxiety.

The fact is IF God is calling us to move to College Station and follow Him there, then HE will make a way there.  It’s not in our hands to do anything more or less than what is before us. We do have some hurdles–some that we will have to go into the muck and mire to deal with, I’m certain, but some will be ones that He removes or gives us a leg up over them.

The whole process is the journey.  God is building into us the tools and understanding that we will need for the place we are going.

So we submit.

We believe.

We go forward.

We lay aside doubt and pick up faith.

We will do the hard work.  The Lord prompted a word in my heart once that I want to share here and now: Sometimes God’s provision looks like hard work.  Work that we do, getting dirty and sore in the process.  It just does.

And in the midst of the hard work, which it is and it will be, of moving, I will spend a lot of time just BE-ing.

BE is the word the Lord pressed upon my heart at IF:Gathering.  You see I grew up with a great understanding of hard work and my work ethic is strong.  But it can come at the expense of resting in the Presence of God and just BE-ing.

So I stopped doing web design–I think it is for good to make room for the new that God is doing in my life.  I’m assisting Sheila part-time and doing a little more work the Lord has provided, which we are sowing into this journey.  And I have made room for all the things required to ready our home for sale–and be present with my children and husband.

Sometimes in my time of just BE-ing, I have gone to pray for others and my family. Sometimes I have rested in the sun–thinking about nothing but the warmth of the sun.  And sometimes I have taken a lot of tangled yarn, untangled it and rewound it.  There is something about the process of unwinding the tangles that remind me of life.

And right now?  Well right now, we are untangling 10 years of living in this home.  There are some knots.  There is a certain realization that we aren’t good at dusting.  But mostly, there is a feeling of reclaiming life…setting things to rights–at least the things that are in our ability to make a change.  The rest, we leave in God’s faithful hands.

I’ll write more as the unfolding happens!

With Joy,

Holly