It Seems Like…

Well, it seems our house has finally sold.  No matter how long it remained on the market or how many reductions we made to the asking price, in light of this economy it is still a miracle that it sold! What now?  People ask and we instinctively feel compelled to produce an answer. At various junctures of this journey we’ve felt vague, even evasive.  Truthfully, our intent has merely been to let go of the notion that we “know” what tomorrow holds and to acknowledge the Lord’s revealing of each next step.  Even when it felt “last minute” we wanted to nestle into His reasons and His outcomes.

The pressure to “know the future” comes from every angle – within and without.  Friends and family naturally ask what we’ll do after this or that occurs.  If we answer questions with uncertainty some eyebrows raise – to seemingly intimate that we are either misguided or lack direction in life altogether.  Has knowing the future somehow become a gauge of spiritual discernment?  The suggestion that we should know where we’re going and what we’ll be doing seems to be the societal norm – but we are not omniscient. We are not “like God,” and letting go of the “need to know” that fosters the feeling of control is liberating, albeit frightening.

Seeing our ingrained need for control has been revelatory.  Assuming we knew what tomorrow would hold was like a security blanket. Working the traditional job, owning a home, two cars, and maintaining the pace of normal life kept the illusion well-fixed. When Mike and I were compelled to leave it all behind we had no idea what the journey would look like. We thought the courage to follow our dream would produce a living similar to the one we were accustomed to. Instead, pretentious boasting about the future and conclusions about God’s objectives were systematically exposed in us.

The past year was opposite our expectations.  Instead of allowing external events to nurture self-sufficiency, God authored external events to trigger internal events that would demolish self-sufficiency.  The distress we encountered was humbling, but He kept us close so that we were never too exhausted or too wearied by fear.  We trusted God (if by a thread) in spite of circumstance.  Even though on the outside it often looked like things were falling apart on us, on the inside, new understanding was taking shape.  Not a day has gone by without His unfolding grace. There’s always more than meets the eye. The things we thought we wanted would have had temporary results; but the things we could not yet see or even think to hope for were the things that last forever.

We still don’t know what tomorrow holds.  Ask us today what we will be doing tomorrow we will say that it seems like we will be moving to New Mexico for a season.  Mom and Dad owned a “little piece of heaven” in the Land of Enchantment before their passing and it may be a good place to nest for awhile.  It seems right to us…but who knows, tomorrow a new plan could unfold before us. We will do what we know to do today, and remain open to the ever blowing winds of change.  Living life in this manner feels vulnerable, defenseless.  The flesh stresses but the spirit rejoices at the hope of even greater abandonment in Him.

Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a city and spend a year there and carry on our business and make money. Yet you do not know [the least thing] about what may happen tomorrow. What is the nature of your life? You are but a wisp of vapor (a puff of smoke, a mist) that is visible for a little while and then disappears [into thin air]. You ought instead to say, If the Lord is willing, we shall live and we shall do this or that [thing]. But as it is, you boast [falsely] in your presumption and your self-conceit. All such boasting is evil.     

James 4:13-16 AMP