We worry…

We’re leaving. We’re moving. We’re uprooting and transitioning. We are stepping out in faith and we’re taking our kids with us. We’re journeying as a family and these oh so small individuals with tremendously large personalities are coming with us. Walking alongside us. Teaching us to see the good, to keep faith, to not worry about every tiny detail because God is big enough and they know that.  

To trust that the ones who are making the decisions for them know what’s best or simply that the ones making the decisions serve a God who knows what’s best. See, while our boys can casually tell a best friend that they won’t be able to come over to their house for a couple of years or excitedly ask us if we’re going to Papua New Guinea tomorrow, we are up many evenings wondering about their future. Wondering what school they’ll go to when they get home, wondering what friends they’ll have, wondering if they’ll be homesick, wondering if they’ll feel lost, lonely or sad. Wondering if they’ll get sick. Wondering if they’ll be ok. 

​We wonder about the temporal, the finite, the trivial and, as we do, we are reminded often that, even if they struggle, they’ll be ok. That, while comfort and ease would be nice, that the character, purpose and satisfaction we hope they will find is most often forged in times of challenge. That so much of our understanding of who God is, who we are and why we’re here has come out of our own periods of deep struggle. 

It has been, in those moments, that we have been shown great comfort, great peace and a great sense of security. Security, not in earthly things but an identity grounded in the belief that this is just a small fragment of what life is all about. The belief that what we have here and now will never satisfy us entirely. 

We don’t know what lies ahead. We don’t know what struggles they will face or challenges they will be called to overcome. We don’t know how they will handle transitions and changes but we do know that they are God’s and we do know that they will have to depend on Him greatly in all aspects of this journey. And that’s enough. That has been the start of every good lesson in our lives. That has been the start of every good and satisfying thing in our lives. That has been the start of this journey and we pray it will be the cornerstone of theirs. Trusting, believing, obeying. Saying no to identities that will vanish and saying yes to identity in Christ.