At what point does one submit to what their calling is? How do we know if it is a calling or something that we have dreamed up on our own? What really is a calling when God can do anything with or without us even there?
All questions we ask…all questions our family has asked REALLY hard in the past 2 months. It has been a fabulous two months of growth. Not always happy, but always faithful, because we are certain that God is truly in control.
About 2 months ago we started the “process” of REALLY searching for a home in Houston because we know that we need to be closer to Rice so that we can fully pour into our ministry of FCA.
Side note…those of you who don’t know this or are new here…Joe is the Rice University FCA director. We have been blessed with being fully committed to these kids and coaches for about 5 years now, and just within the past years have had an insane calling on our hearts to move back into town so that we can really pour into our kids without sacrificing our family’s well being.
That was the beginning…waiting and looking for a house that God wanted to bless us with…we searched all over and found our dream house about 5 mins away from campus…so close that Joe could ride his bike to practices and such…or vice versa…kids could ride their bikes to our house. You have know idea the pressure that goes into wanting to love on our FCA kids when living 45mins-1 hour away. It’s been an insane strain on our family…especially for Joe. He spends so much of his time in the car that could be so much more useful spent with us or on campus. It is so hard when one of our kids calls us up wanting to talk and we have to “schedule” in time to meet with them…and when it comes to me it is sometimes a couple weeks out. Sure doesn’t help a kid out when they really want to talk or vent and I cannot get there anytime soon.
So…the offer was placed. The offer was accepted. The bank, however, declined. It was a process that took about 6 days, not including weekends to drag us through. The pure excitement and joy of moving…then the pure disappointment of a dream crushed. Seems so trivial, I know…but so hard to explain the heartache that it put us through.
All turning us to the question of: are we really called down there? Or is this just a pipe dream we have come up with?
I LOVE that He broke us and we still cling to His promises…tested us and we followed through, fought our hardest and persevered…showed us the potential and taught us SO much about our finances, our family and our faith…and now I can say that we WILL be ready…and so excited for what He has in store for our little family of 5.
That however sums up some of the discouraging sounding updates and blog posts lately. Like I said before, seems so trivial…because we are so blessed at the place in life that we are. We are just praying for God to move even more, so that we can follow through on our promises to Him to more fruitfully serve…why not…we are still doing the best we possibly can from 1 hour away…but holy cow…what a blessing on our lives it MIGHT be to be only 5 minutes from the ministry we have been called to. But we shall see…it might not be in his plans to be so close…and we are ok with that. We are committed to Rice FCA, nothing can change that. And if God needs satan to keep a 1 hour commute each way as our growing pains…then so be it…no way satan can stop us from one of the reasons we are here on Earth and one of the places we have been called to invest time into.
AMEN! To God be the glory!
And just because I can, and because we all need a good laugh…I will leave you with the craziness of our life lately. The past week has been an eventful one…more details that I will be putting up on the family blog…however…just a glimpse of what these boys can get into in about 5 minutes of not looking. Yes, Brock was covered, but not nearly as bad. Yes, that is real house paint…not kids paint. And YES…they are very lucky they are so cute!
