The Backwards Glance

There have been two weeks of silence on this blog now. Some of this silence has been unavoidable, with the busy-ness of a family vacation and then all the adjustments back to "normal" life absorbing all my time and energy. The other part of the quiet, though, has been simply my heart not feeling ready to look back yet, for fear that I will stumble under all the pain of letting go, of having to move forward day by day without these precious kids surrounding me and filling every moment with their love and smiles. My heart has been raw and broken each of the 14 days I've been home--yearning to be back, yet struggling to figure out where G0d has me now and how He wants me to move forward while still always carrying the treasures of the past two months forever with me. It's continually feeling unsettled and divided, like I have one foot in each of two worlds that are growing farther and farther apart.

Our p@stor once quoted author Elyse Fitzpatrick who wrote that "life is a series of divestitures." It's continually letting go of things we yearn to hold with clenched fists and instead giving them back to G0d, who gave them to us in the first place. We give up the freedoms and joys of childhood for adult responsibilities and burdens. We all give up our health, our children, our jobs, our relationships, our ideas about how life should be at one point or another.  We give up our old, sinful way of doing things and our very lives to take up the cross of Jesus and follow Him. As Ecclesiastes so wisely says, "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven" (3:1). The L0rd gives, and He also takes away, yet His name is to be blessed in both (Job 1:21). He gives many, many good gifts in our lifetimes that we praise Him for. Yet if or when He calls us to give them back to Him and walk a different road of faith and trusting in Him, we have to be willing to do so, not resentfully, but *gratefully*, recognizing that His grace gave us the good gifts in the first place and they belong to Him.

This is the attitude I struggle to cultivate in myself now. G0d knows how much I love the children of Shepherd's Field, how tightly I would wish to hold onto them and all the rich experiences I had with them this summer. He has called me, though, to let them go, to give them all back to His care and keeping and trust Him for what He has for me next across the ocean from them in my home. The fact that this beautiful journey of living with them and hugging them every day had to come to an end right now doesn't diminish at all the gift that it was to go, or all the grace and love G0d lavished on me in giving me this opportunity. So I'm ready to look back now with gratitude, to continue to finish the story of this summer that I have begun here. There will always be a bitter-sweetness about it now that it is a part of the past, but I trust that G0d will continue to use it to mold and shape the future in ways that magnify Him.

Reminders of G0d's goodness...

 

Eric and Joy picked roses for me one day when we were out playing. Yet another moment where I just said, "G0d, I don't deserve this! Why would You love me so sweetly, so unselfishly through these little kids that haven't ever even known the love of a family like I have? Why do You keep showing me again and again that You have so much more to give me and teach me through them than I ever have to offer back?"

 Long after the flowers have wilted and the faces have been hugged goodbye, I will remember the goodness of G0d in this moment...the simply joy of G0d's creatures blessing each other through His beautiful creations and revealing more of His tender heart for us all.

Greater things are still to come...