Strength & Waiting

Psalm 27
13 "I remain confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living."
14 "Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord."

We have been waiting, 430 days to be exact...waiting on the Lord to guide our steps and direct our paths.  The Lord is good; we got a contract on our house last Wednesday!  In 430 days, I assume we've had close to 100 showings (40 just in 2012)...we had grown weary and lacking in confidence, but the Lord used those days to strengthen our hearts.  I think strength comes from weariness and perseverance.  I think when we've grown tired is when the Lord shows His love and power in our lives...and in turn, our hearts are made stronger by His grace and His goodness.  I am convinced that the Lord showed us things and taught us things over the last 14 months that required this 'perfect' scenario.  It's been such a roller coaster of longing for His provision and then doubting His provision.  My faith has been strengthened in my moments of doubt.  I am so humbled by the ways in which my faith has been made new.  I am humbled by all those moments where I doubted the Lord's involvement in my life...and fought emotions of neglect and abandonment.  But He IS sovereign.  He has taken these moments that appear negative and lacking in faith in my life, and has woven together such a beautiful design.  I have taken a lot of deep breaths in the last week.  Sure, there are still details to sort through (and lots of them), but I am so blessed to take those deep breaths seeing God's unmistakable hand-print on what is unfolding in our lives.

In the last week (and really in just a couple of days) we got a contract on our house and found a great home to lease in the Yukon School District for the next year!  Towards the end of March, we found out Tessa's transfer from Mustang to Yukon was denied.  So, our only way to make sure her transition into the school district (that starts in December) could happen with Yukon schools, was to live in the district by that time.  And things are looking good!  We don't close on our house until June 15th, but we will be signing our lease this weekend so we can get moved before Tessa's surgery!  Tessa is having her left CI surgery on Tuesday June 5th, so we decided to take advantage of this next week and go ahead and get moved and settled before her surgery date.  Yesterday, Darin and Parker had their last day of school and our inspections were done.  We will sign our lease on Saturday and I'll be off work next week so we can all work on getting us moved!

There are so many emotions circling around.  It's hard to know what to do with yourself when you've pressed on so intensely through a season of life.  It's almost a shock to our systems to be free of the burden of selling our house.  When I think about how much of our lives it has consumed over the last year...I am saddened and sometimes angry. BUT, when I look at the Lord's goodness, when I consider the work He has done in our lives and in our hearts, when I focus on what matters...I am overwhelmed by His love for us.  It's too easy to look back and only see the negative in all those times we cleaned, in all the stress that was created by having our house on the market that long & trying to juggle everything else in our crazy busy lives...and summing it all up as such a waste.  But when I stop to understand how drastically the Lord can change our lives when we wait on Him, I feel nothing but gratitude that He invested so heavily in our lives.  I am thankful for a season of 'suffering' and stress, to see, that regardless of how lacking my faith, regardless of how many times I failed in 430 days to see His love and His goodness...He provided anyway.  I am so thankful that He gives us a lens to look back and see things the way He did the whole time...because with that, my faith is strengthened and with that, His grace is revealed.

We are excited about this next chapter in our lives!

~Whitney