Learning

Something that the girls and I both love is when they get to teach me something new!

How did I get to be 33 years old and I don´t know how to cut up a whole chicken correctly?  Saturday afternoon our house mom had an obligation and the girls came over here to our house for a little while.  K taught me to cut up a whole chicken into beautiful pieces and then make the most delicious fried chicken ever!  They watched Elf and helped me with my weekly meal planning/cooking session and left me freshly made corn tortillas for dinner.

I want to be a thousand times more humble than I am.  I want to be a learner and receive help well and have lots more days like Saturday.  But its hard and my pride gets in the way.  Its something that I see in myself that helps me to understand where the girls are coming from in a lot of ways.

They don't come from good backgrounds, don't have good habits, don't know everything about , keeping a house, being a mom, going to school, having a good interview, etc.  But its hard to learn new things and be humble and accept that you've learned a lot of things wrong in your life and now you have to relearn them.  And it takes a long time and a lot of new experiences to be able to accept that.  You have to see new examples and see people doing things a different way to want to change.

But it happens... slowly but surely, it happens.

These past few weeks have been really good with our youngest, C.  She has her moments, but overall, we are seeing BIG changes in her!  She has come up with goals for herself and is working hard to meet them.  She is talking more freely about her family and her past and what she desires for a future relationship with them.  She is working hard on her relationship with her daughter.  I'm just proud of her.  She has been with us a little over a year and its taken this long for her to realize that she wants a different future and that it is worth the hard work.  That's learning!

God is so good to let me be on the front lines to watch these girls learn and change and see the same things happening in me.

Faith

I have often taught Bible studies that touch on the theme of faith.  Time after time I have used the example of a chair to get the point across.  I can say from across the room that I trust that the chair will hold me or that I have faith in the strength of the chair... but real faith is exercised when I actually walk across the room and sit down in said chair.  That is putting my faith into action... and that is where I find myself this week.

The last two months have been some of the most stretching of my life.  I have struggled with real anxiety and fear and I've been having a hard time just sitting down in the chair and letting what I know about the Lord actually take root in my heart.  I know that He is good.  I know that He is a provider.  I know that He has proven Himself faithful time and time again.  And yet... I still find it hard to trust... why is that?

Did you know that PDE hasn't been fully funded ever in the last nearly 5 years?!?  If you take a look at our monthly budget and monthly giving we should have closed down a long time ago.  And yet... God has always provided.  No one has ever gone hungry and we've always paid the electric bill and our employees.  And God has used that to keep the house open and we have seen many come to know Him as a result.  But from a worldly point of view, it just doesn't make sense.

And PDE support is my missionary support which means that when PDE isn't fully funded, I'm not fully funded.  And that, my friends, is a scary place to sit when we're talking about your own family and your kids and putting food on the table.  To be quite honest, I'm looking forward to in the next stage of life not living off of support!  It has been good for me, and stretching, unpleasant at times, and some days surprisingly joyful but I'm not going to miss it :)

And then there is our paperwork, visas, green cards, waiting on the government... a whole lot of things that are hard to time.  And at the same time I want to be faithful and leave well and leave PDE taken care of when we leave.  So I'm anxious about the timing and anxious that I will work myself out of a job before our paperwork is ready for us to move.  As you may imagine, tinking about moving a family of 7 overseas has a lot of details that comes with it... and oh the culture shock that is sure to unsue!

So this is a stage of a lot of waiting and trusting and asking the Lord for peace of heart.  And I'm not always doing a good job of sitting in the chair and exercising my faith.  Can you pray with and for me that I will trust the Lord's provision?  For the ministry, for my family, for this time of transition...

Colossians 1:17 was my theme verse about the time that I moved to Costa Rica and then Honduras and its one that I will clinging too strongly over the next 6-8 months as well!

And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. - Colosians 1:17