holiday weekend

For Memorial Day weekend, we stayed at our pastor's house as he and his family were gone to conference.  What a nice change of pace to stay somewhere and not have to interrupt the lives of other people!  We were so blessed to have a house all to ourselves.

This weekend, I think it hit us how much has changed in the last 3 years and how much more will be changing as this year goes on.

Jason and I are waiting on baited breath for the call from our District Superintendent to go to Ann Arbor for accreditation   Once we go through that, we are ready to go where ever God calls us.  I am excited, a little nervous, but over all so humbled that God has chosen our family to be a vessel he uses to specifically tell others the Good News as a paying job.  I am so proud of Jason for answering the call, even though it has been a hard, painful, journey for all three of us.  We would have it no other way.  The struggles we have faced in this season have chipped away the walls that stood between us and the people God needed us to be.  I am different, I am a new creation, I am becoming the woman God wants me to be so I can fulfill his plan for my life.  His grace IS sufficient and through Him I was able to overcome the obsticals, the heartache, the anger, and the fear that was holding me back from what I am today.

Jason started a new job yesterday.  God was so faithful this last month providing for us.  I watched my cousin's girls all month, something we had decided on months ago, and yet God had a plan and what I got paid covered what we needed each week.  Jason new job would have never happened had he not been laid off and looking for jobs AND by being off he was able to go through all the interviews and tests.

It is all worth it.  Jason and I are reading a book called "The Land Between" by Jeff Manion.  He was a speaker I saw at Orange.  His talk had me sitting on the edge of my seat, holding back tears, the entire time.  His message is that God takes us through the "land between", or the desert, or the valley, whatever you want to call it, to teach us.  (Ok, duh, I know you are thinking, that is what most preachers say).  His story, however, is based on how God took the Israelites out of fertile Egypt and to the land "flowing with milk and honey".  He didn't tell them they would be spending years in the desert, nor did he tell them why.  But there in the land between there faith was tried and tested.  So is ours.  We go there and our faith either flourishes or fades.  Our trust in God can either increase or die, based on how we respond to what we experience in the land between.

This book has changed and ratified my life and how I look at it.  It has changed my perspective on God and what he is teaching me.  I can be thankful for the hard times and look to God and the future he is giving me with hope and expectation.  I long for the land flowing with milk and honey and I welcome the land between so I can be molded and pressed, tried and found worthy.