Finishing Well Part 1

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JULY 2013

We wanted to finish well. We began our race in Indiana thinking it would be a 15 year marathon. 

We thought my mom had that long. But 3 years after our arrival, she went Home, and we were left to ask, "What now Lord? Where would You have us?"

We initially felt He would lead us rather quickly into a full time position for my husband somewhere else. But as the months and years went by, we wondered.

Well, I wondered. After 9 years I became convinced Indiana was where He would have us. I began to learn about this wonderful thing called "Community". With it came "Authenticity" and "Transparency" and "Intentionality." I fell in love with the Body of Christ, and met God as my Abba Father, after all these years. We felt God awakening us and awakening those in our sphere with His Spirit, His call to more, more... more relationship, more desperateness, more hunger and thirst for more of Him.

He gave me sisters who were not afraid to call me out on sin, or challenge me to rise up and be the woman of God He has made me to be. He gave me sisters who taught me how to laugh at myself, how to see the gray in my black and white world, and how to rest in His finished work on the Cross.

God thoroughly swept through every corner of my life, making me lay down all that I found my identity in besides Him. It was not pretty, and there are tell tale signs of the struggle still discernable in my life, if you know me well enough.  And then He gave me two distinct times when I lost hope. I could not see Jesus, and that scared me most of all. I could not see Him, hear Him, discern Him, and up to that point, no matter what happened around us, in my husband, in my kids, I could see Jesus, see purpose, see Hope, and I hung on. But Hope was gone, and all I could do was cry out to Jesus.  Mercifully, those two times were very short, but the impression they left are permanent.  He is my All. Without Him, I have nothing. I know this, because He proved it.

During those times, I didn't care whether or not our circumstances changed. I only wanted to stay close to Jesus, to stay close to my Abba Father who taught me to pray for His best and wait for it, no matter how long, to stay close to the community He gave to me, to the sisters who walked arm in arm with me and loved me deeply, even though they knew me thoroughly.

And then He called us to move.