Black bins with yellow lids are beginning to fill the empty spaces in our house and a six-week countdown of little airplanes is now displayed on the fridge. I’ve got a stack of homeschooling books piled on the floor and a notebook full of lists started (an attempt to organize my brain a little more).
Some of our better-looking clothes have already been packed away, along with a few of our favorite games and a candle labeled Home, Sweet Home. Memory books with dust engrained over the years, favorite stuffed animals from earlier days, and my collection of words — poetry and prayers penned in the longest and hardest season of my life — are all carefully placed beside the bins, nestled against the wall.
We are currently planning our very first furlough back to North America. I have spent a total of nine weeks in North America over the past seven years. It’s recently dawned on me that we will arrive on the exact day we first arrived in Uganda back in 2016. We will celebrate ten years abroad by being welcomed back home to North America. A whole lot of life has been lived in the past decade, most of it in a very uncertain season for our family — with no end date, no return trips planned, or any idea of how the Lord would make a way.
It’s been a life lived dependent on the Lord in every area.
When circumstances crashed wildly and obliterated our expectations of serving abroad years ago, we were left with hands open in full surrender. But I can testify that the Lord has met me in this waiting place and even now as I’m trying to walk in a new space — transition.
It will be the first time we pack up the house to keep all the living things and dust from descending while we are away for nine months. It will be the first time to meet family members in person, the first time to experience playing with cousins, the first time to travel across the ocean with every member of our family, the first time to fully feel the relief of a challenging adoption journey, and the first break from an extended time serving abroad.
So, imagine what a gift it was to feel so understood in this new season of uncertainty. I couldn’t believe the timing of the conversation with a friend back home last week. It had been years since we had spoken in real time, and it was as if I was looking at a reflection of my own weary and joy-filled heart. Like we had been traveling parallel journeys unknowingly.
We chatted early into the morning my time (thank you eight-hour time difference!), but it was such a gift of God’s goodness to me and a reminder that He has gone before us even now.
For so long I have sought to discover the goodness found even in the hard, uncertain, and lengthy waiting place. Honestly, it has all caught me by surprise, with desperate prayers answered in recent months, absolute miracles paving the way, and a new season of celebration drawing us in.
I am so incredibly grateful, and I’m feeling the weight of what this life has been.
I feel as if I’m limping out of a war zone and shots are still being fired even now with the end in sight. I’ve never experienced being in transition like this before. My emotions are spilling over in tears of grief and joy and relief. My arms feel too weak to hold all this goodness and joy bubbling, and I could shout it from the mountain top of how faithful the Lord has been.
Even when things became really hard.
Even when chaos threatened to destroy our very hearts.
Even when saying no to corruption, knowing it would cost us time.
Even when choosing His way meant dying to what we wanted.
How gracious the Lord is to remind me that I have been securely held this entire time. By the hands who have helped us to take hold of our children, by financially covering us to keep serving others across the ocean, by cultivating a ministry that’s thriving, by the persistent prayers of those far away, and in all the ways the Lord has written His provision and His faithfulness into our testimony.
Even now, as I’m caught in the middle of feeling a whole lot of emotions.
The loss and the joy.
The celebration and the sorrow.
The overwhelm and the excitement.
The gratitude and the utter exhaustion.
Oh, the tears that have been falling as I struggle to find my footing in a new season of living in the AND.
Perhaps it’s the relief I am bound to feel as I’m embraced in a long-awaited hug, or meeting nieces and nephews for the first time, or the joy of seeing my children experience everything (and I mean everything) in North America for the first time. Maybe it’s the walks in parks with leaves changing colors, or knowing there are friends walking similar journeys back home, just traveling down different roads.
I’m learning to hold space for the whole story, because it’s not all glory and it’s not all pain. I have discovered there is a great deal of peace to be found in the wilderness seasons, but what about the grief I’m feeling in a season filled with so much joy? It’s a tender place of straddling the unknown of the “not yet” and the joyful celebration of “look what’s coming.”
In recent days, new immigration changes in our home country are implicating our already complicated life and we’ve just experienced the Lord move in an impossible situation that loomed before us. And He has made things even better than we could have imagined.
If you find yourself in at the threshold of a new season or you are feeling the tension of grief and joy, I pray this place of transition leads you to root even deeper in the Lord. Though the waves of uncertainty are trying to overturn us, though we may be tossed about by circumstances out of our control, He is in the boat with us saying, “Peace, be still.”
The words of Psalm 40:1-3 have been resounding in my heart lately:
I waited patiently for the Lord, and he turned to me and heard my cry for help. He brought me up from a desolate pit, out of the muddy clay, and set my feet on a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear, and they will trust in the Lord.
God is at work in even the smallest details, even as I celebrate with tears flowing like little rivers of healing, embrace gratitude and the grieving, and live in the in-between places of this incredibly complicated life. I have known Him in the wilderness of waiting and persistent aching. And with a grief that lingers while praises pour from my lips, my heart is incredibly overwhelmed with the goodness of God. I can testify to His faithfulness as He continues to gently lead me in the uncertainty and the celebrating.
