Last year, my family and I took a leap of faith…we packed up everything and moved from the open plains of Texas to the rolling hills of Tennessee. Leaving a home of 16 years came with many changes ~ missing the comfort of family & friends, leaving a church family that played an integral role in the restoration of our marriage, uprooting the familiarity of school & jobs, and giving up ever knowing how to get to the grocery store without getting lost for 30 minutes! It’s absolutely been a season full of trust and growth spiritually and emotionally as we’ve gained our bearings in this new life.
One of the hardest parts of this move as a momma was the impact on my children. At first, they were excited about the new adventure as we looked for a home, new school, and new church. And bit by bit God has blessed our obedience in this move as we’ve slowly settled in to a life full of community and jobs filled with ministry. However, as the months wore on and the newness of the move wore off, both my children started to show in different ways their uncertainty with all the change.
My daughter has always been an extrovert and is blossoming into a beautifully empathetic daughter of God. When she’s stressed, frusturated, lonely, mad…she prays and writes letters to God to sort out her feelings. She has a beautiful child like faith and praises Him daily through song and dance and joy.
My son is more like me…a true introvert. We are quiet, observant, drawn inward to our thoughts. Taking a step towards friendship and community is a challenge to our nature. However I knew with this move, he and I both needed to really step outside of our comfort zones and seek others. God has really blessed my efforts in ways I could not have hoped or dreamed for. For my son, it was a little bit harder. As an extremely logical and practical child, he had a hard time understanding why God didn’t immediately answer his prayers for friendship. But he kept on being diligent in his trust, finding ways to look at a painful situation in a positive way. In October, I wrote about him learning how to be a friend.
It took a few months after this initial post for my sweet boy to see any results of his prayers and obedience. In fact, he never became more than acquaintances with the boy mentioned and asked endless questions about why God wouldn’t answer his prayers for a friend NOW. We had sweet countless talks about the sovereignty of God, the beauty in the waiting, His perfect answer and timing. Some days my boy was faithful in trust, some days he’d cry with the loneliness. But he always worked his way back to trust.
One sunny day, we noticed a new boy had moved in. It took my son a few days to pray through his fear of rejection and fear of walking up to someone he didn’t know, but he finally did. Now, they are inseparable.
On Easter Sunday my son was baptized…and one of the main reasons he cited to me when he accepted Jesus into his heart was because of this situation….My son had lived through the tension of waiting, the hard path of obedience in faithfulness and trust, and the perseverance of praying to a God who sometimes uses the hard changes of life to bring us closer to Him.
Recent Comments