On January 4th at around 5:00 PM MT, we pulled onto the YWAM campus in Lakeside, Montana. Needless to say, after 7 days of long car rides, AirBnB’s and even food poisoning… we were exhausted. We stepped out of the truck, stretched our legs and took a deep breath of the cool mountain air. We tracked down our rooms, two conjoined Vietnam era barracks rooms with built-in wardrobes, a queen bed, bunkbeds, community bathrooms and very thin walls. We unloaded all our possessions into the two small rooms and began the tedious process of unpacking and quickly organizing everything so we could get the kiddos down and get some much needed rest. It was at this point the reality of everything really set in. Our life is now drastically different than it has ever been.
As Annah wrestled Troy to change his diaper while simultaneously feeding him a bottle and digging through a bag to find Kennedy’s stuffed animals that had been packed away for the past month and a half, she jokingly looked up at me and yelled, “This was YOUR idea!” To which I immediately replied, “THIS WAS NOT MY IDEA!” “None of this was MY idea!” Annah still laughing that she had pushed my buttons responded, “Love, I know! I was joking.” To which I responded, “I'm not.” There we were in the midst of an adult meltdown. The last 5 months of praying, organizing, crying, fundraising and selling all of our belongings had finally come to a head. We completely uprooted our entire lives without knowing exactly what God has planned for us … only the first step that we were called.
Fresh Life Church shared a post this weekend that really hit home and gave us comfort and peace about our journey. “God doesn’t call us to understand; he calls us to obey.” How humbling is that statement in today’s world? As Christians we live in a society that constantly demands answers to everything, yet in reality we are called to be different. Which is why it seems so radical when a Christian follows God’s calling on their lives because the reality is they honestly have no understand to what the calling is…only that they must obey.
Our four year old, Kennedy is very strong willed. She’s a quick and eager learner and has a great vocabulary for her age. The problem is trying to get her to grasp that she doesn’t have to understand a direction that we give her…she just needs to obey. We are not asking for an explanation for why she is doing what she doing or how she will be upset etc. We are asking for her to obey and trust that as her parents we have knowledge and specific reasons for our directions that are there to keep her safe. How similar is it that as Christians we aren’t always given the answers to the directions that God gives us. Would I love to understand and see the whole picture ahead of time…uh, who wouldn’t?! But we are not entitled to know and no matter how much we kick and scream, God doesn’t have to tell us. None of this is our idea but we heard His calling and are choosing to obey.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6