last day

It's our last day in this little town.

We have been blessed and encouraged by our friends here through these last few weeks. So many have supported and encouraged us. Some friends have come and helped me pack this week as I was at that desperate place of trying so hard to get everything packed but just not having the strength to do it. Even as they help with the practical stuff, they make it hard to leave. We will miss them. There are tears in many eyes as we say goodbye.

Several people have expressed relief for us that we are going back to Spokane to stay with family. But the thing is, even though we are looking forward to seeing some of our loved ones, it was not our desire to move back to the Northwest. We were committed to being here for a lifetime. We were not looking for an opportunity to return to Idaho or Washington. We moved here to make Iowa our home for as long as the Lord wanted us to be here. Living near family is no indication of being in the Lord's will or not going through hard seasons of intense loneliness.

This will make move #15 in our marriage, not including the summers spent in Sudan or Quebec. We've lived in fourteen different homes long enough for those to be our addresses. You might think we like moving, or do it for a hobby. But just for the record, we don't really like moving. We would love, love, love to be in one place forever, or for at least a good long time. Somewhere that we can plant down deep roots, invest in one local body of believers, grow a garden, plant berry bushes. That was our longing before we came here, and the thing that was different about coming here was that for the first time, we thought we were in one place to stay. There are other communities we thought that we would stay in for the long-term, but this is the first time we've lived in a home and actually thought we were going to stay for a long time. We've considered it in many other places, but we've known that certain places, like our home where we lived the longest in Idaho, were just not practical for the long-term. This one seemed right, and it was right.

It is hard to have dreams ripped away again. But in this move, the Lord has enabled me to say, yes. Yes, Lord, if you want to move us every two months for the rest of our lives, I will trust You. Because I want to be where you want us to be. I want to go where You want us to go. He has somehow enabled me to let it go, let go of this desire to be in one place for a good long time, to desire instead just to be with Him, to be near Him.

"One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple."
-- Psalm 27:4

This has been a lovely home for us. But. Last June, when I woke up the day after we had moved here, and I found that we lived in a lovely old farmhouse, with a big porch, and hardwood floors, and white carpet, and a place for a homeschool room, and a lovely big green yard with a garden spot and strawberries and shade trees, and Keith had a position of pastor, and I was home with my three little ones, and everything was just the way I would hope for it to be.... I realized then, so clearly, that none of it mattered at all unless I was dwelling in the Lord's presence daily. The Lord's presence is where my satisfaction is found (and yours too!!). Nothing matters unless I am dwelling in Him. And if I am dwelling in Him, then it really doesn't matter whether I am living here in a big lovely house or whether we are unemployed and living in an RV at my sister-in-law's yard... which, of course, is the next step for us after this one.

And I am supernaturally just fine with it, because God is my strength, He is my victory, He is my help, and He withholds no good thing from me. He knows just what I need, He will indeed give what is good, and I know that He has not forgotten us. I will in no way be ashamed, for the Lord goes before me and goes behind me, and He is the defender of my reputation, and He is the unseen Guide behind all the circumstances that seem so strange to me.

"Am I preventing God from doing things in my circumstances by saying that it will only serve to hinder my fellowship with Him? How irrelevant and disrespectful that is! It does not matter what my circumstances are. I can be as much assured of abiding in Jesus in any one of them as I am in any prayer meeting. It is unnecessary to change and arrange my circumstances myself. Our Lord’s inner abiding was pure and unblemished. He was at home with God wherever His body was. He never chose His own circumstances, but was meek, submitting to His Father’s plans and directions for Him. Just think of how amazingly relaxed our Lord’s life was! But we tend to keep God at a fever pitch in our lives. We have none of the serenity of the life which is 'hidden with Christ in God' " (Colossians 3:3).
-- Oswald Chambers

I marvel sometimes that the Lord is taking us on such a winding path. I definitely don't see the end purpose for all this. I would not choose such a path and at times this spring, I have been absolutely sick about it. But what can I do? God is at work in us in ways that I don't yet understand. I choose to trust Him. I choose to submit to His workings in me. Sometimes I think that I must have an incredibly idolatrous and rebellious heart, that He must continue to bring us through so many hardships, just to get me to look at Him, to rely on Him rather than my circumstances, to desire His face rather than a steady income or a pretty home! But I am thankful that He loves me enough to take me through whatever it takes, so that I can know Him more, that I can be found in Him.

"But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
-- Philippians 3:7-14