Wow...so long since I have written, but so much I have wanted to say!!
There's been so much to do...packing, printing & mailing newsletters, writing LOTS of thank yous for jaw dropping generosity, filling out Kenya visa applications, making travel plans, shopping for Christmas, shopping for a move to Africa, celebrating an early Christmas with my family, celebrating Thanksgiving....just a lot!
The countdown to our financial clearance deadline last week was a nailbiter! It was the day when we found out of our target date to leave for Africa in January was going to happen or if we would have to wait until July. My feelings vacillated between fear and peace. The peace He provided, never fails me with calm when needed...and He knows when we needed it. Seemed like if I was stressed with details, worry, Jerry was a rock. If he was stressin', I was cool. We work so well. God knew that full well when he brought us together :) About the fear over the deadline...years ago fear ruled my life, but since my return to Him from my prodigal days, it's not been the debilitating frightening pain as before, just little meanders when I forget who's really in charge and got us all in His palm. And the dream helped to bring clarity to the situation....I dream vivid dreams all the time, often very strange, I think perhaps caused by depression meds, but most the time I just find them entertaining. Every now there's one so real that I wake shaken to the core. The last one of those was the dream in high school of being on death row and walking to the gallows under the glare of a poisonous crowd, save one friend that was the only one that wanted me to live. I was hung in my dream. Woke up choking. Yikes. This dream was worse. It was that I saw a snake had found it's way into our house and in the scuffle to try and get it out, Grace and Isaiah were bitten...and died. I literally felt the anguish and loss in my dream, and felt I lived through days of loss. And then I woke up to the "problem" before me, a mere money matter...no illness, no death, no loss of a precious child. Just another wacky dream or God's creative way of bringing things into perspective? :)
Given my own experiences with God, how I could've doubted Him is tragic...but really I didn't DOUBT, just wasn't sure His timing was aligned with ours. So I'm delighted to say God moved that mountain! He brought in $15,000 in donations and $3,000 in monthly pledges in 4 weeks!!! Only GOD can do that! Hallelujah! I am so excited to finally be going to Africa! We're at the culminating point of literally years of praying, planning and preparing and am just jumpin' out of my skin with joy!!!
The only dampening of this happpiness is for my precious first daughter. Olivia is very anxious, nearly paralyzed with fear. She just doesn't know what this move will look like for her and is leaving the familiar. I cry out to God for peace for her that I feel. I KNOW God will certainly provided for her emotional needs as he does for the financial ones, but will appreciate your help in taking it to the Father. I am praying that she will quickly make good friends in Kenya, I believe that if that happens, she will be able to relax and everything else will fall into place for her.
Olivia and Jerry are in Minnesota now gathering the belongings we left stored there when we went for training in North Carolina. I think this is great timing for Olivia to see her good friends again and bid another farewell. They're staying at her best friend's house and Olivia was even recruited at the 11th hour to participate in our church's kids' Christmas play, which she will just love. I just wish I could be there to see it. It's so fun to watch her with her friends, like a flower that opens to the sun in the morning, -having friends that love her for who she is brings out the real wacky fun-loving, creative, good-natured loyal Olivia.
I mentioned how my life experience with God has given me freedom from fear...let me elaborate a bit...I became pregnant with Olivia my freshman year in college, in the midst of a depressed, lonely, dark, rebellious period in my life as a prodigal, running from God and my family in trying to discern my true identity. Becoming pregnant as a single college student at the Christian college my parents' attended, and being the daughter of missionaries, I was devastated...but I now know she saved my life, probably...certainly saved me from more heart ache. Because when alone in that bathroom stall reading a positive pregnant test, I knew my choices would now effect another life beside my own only. Had it not been for Olivia, I might have fallen into drugs or had more bad boyfriends in my history, I probably would have run from God much, much longer. But pregnancy is the hardest indiscretion to hide :) I had to face head on the turmoil inside that was causing me to make my life an effective tornado of bad decisions. It was awful walking around campus being the one every one knew had messed up. It felt awful telling Mom and Dad over the phone long distance in Costa Rica what I had done. Bringing my parents to tears was like being stabbed. So thanks to God bringing Olivia into my life, I stopped smoking immediately, eventually cut loose the bad boyfriends bringing me down more than building me up, and eventually (after a LONG 9 agonizing months and 2 weeks after her birth) gave in to God because of the persistent prayers and presence of my Mom and her words I'll never forget, "You can always come home." They were a salve to my soul. So with a one month old Olivia, I went back home to Costa Rica with Mom and lived home again for a year while seeking healing and redemption from God and my parents and myself, all the while struggling to learn how to be a single mom. I was forgiven and clung to His incredible grace like a security blanket. I knew what depths I was capable of without Him and how undeserving of His great love I am! This is when the height of fear fought to take residence within me. I believe now it was the enemy seeking to keep God's plan, that we now see coming to fruition, from occurring. I could not sleep at night, when I tried to still my mind to sleep, thoughts of the depths I'd sunk to plagued me, movies slowly played of horrible scenes I had willingly participated in and hideous fears wrapped their icy fingers around my heart. Irrational fears that Olivia's biological father would somehow legally take her away from me forever (even though he had attempted NO contact, or to support her in any way). I was lonely and incredibly guilty since my choices meant she was growing up without a father, and that she would one day have to face the fact that he had chosen to not seek a relationship with her. I was sure I had destroyed both our lives and doomed us to a welfare existence. I SO dreaded going to bed because that's when that merciless frigid hand would squeeze harder and harder and make me feel smaller and smaller.
I don't remember a specific turning point. I just know it got better, the more I hungered for and sought God, the easier it was to sleep, to trust. It took years, but God took the fear and gave me joy, "His greater joy"!!! I can't help but shake my head in amazement that through His grace and that of my family, we made it through college -as a single mom & todder; and an amazing man, brought by God, somehow fell in love with this flawed and broken person and saw beauty and wanted to also become Olivia's true father by adopting her a year after our wedding in Costa Rica. Yes, I klnow that was a huge run-on, but breaking up the incredible miracle God has done in this life....just couldn't do it. So now, you know the story and can share our amazement that God has taken the life I shattered and arranged all those broken pieces, made a beautiful family and made our dream for family ministry, to serve his purposes in Africa through aviation, imminent. Wow!
My God is in the business of miracles. I praise You, Jesus!!
