Wednesday, August 18, 2010

from there to here

When I reflect on my life as a married woman, I realize my husband and I have lived quite the life of provision from the Lord. In fact, I clearly see that the only way we were able to survive mentally, physically and financially throughout the last eight years, starting careers, changing careers, going to seminary, having kids, buying a house just to name a few, was solely upon the provision of the God we worship. Without Him giving us our every need, we wouldn't be where we are today.

It is an understatement to say our lives look very different now than what they did in the beginning. So where did we start? I was married to a man who wasn't sure if it was his lot in life to have kids, he felt an interest in theology but DID NOT want to pastor. Neither of us wanted to leave our beloved city, St. Louis, we were both moving forward in our careers, me as a caseworker and he as a financial guy. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment near family and the city, we were growing our community as a married couple, making friends and becoming active together in our church.

Where are we now? I'm a homemaker, raising my kids, doing what I can to serve in our church alongside my husband who is now a pastor of spiritual formation at a fast-growing country church in a small mountain city in Montana. We've gone from city slickers to small town folk, from a billion stores with infinite choices promising to fulfill any want or whim at your fingertips to a handful of local ones, from nice Midwesterners to bend-over-backwards, "whatever you need I can help" Westerners.

Though we got here to our surprise, it wasn't without our God shaping and molding our hearts, igniting our passions and fleshing out our gifts, leading us and teaching us, pruning and preparing us for the great adventure that lay ahead.

Though the path of Lord leading the church to us started in February of this year, our path of being led to them started much earlier...