Have you ever felt like everything surrounding you is dry? Not literally, mind you, but spiritually, mentally and emotionally? The spring that seemed quench your weariness for a season of life has slowed to but a trickle, and even while you are thankful for what little you still have, there is a constant fear that it is not enough and it, too, will dry up. I am in such a desert. Our family moved to a rural town in Minnesota in the middle of a December blizzard. I found myself full of conflicting doubts and hopes about the new life in which we were embarking. We left sunny Colorado Springs and our friends, mentors, homeschool co-op and the military life behind us in order to give our family a chance for a better life and childhood for our precious little ones. We dreamed of a life without deployments, constant moves, and the infuriating indecision by people who control your life, but don't live it. I'm not sure if we've found what we're looking for yet.
Small town Minnesota isn't exactly what we had planned when we dreamed of civilian stability. I try to remind myself that we had remained in the military in Colorado, the boys and I would be there alone. My husband would be serving his second tour of duty in Iraq and I'd be a temporarily single mommy again. And yet I can't help but wish for the 'old days'. I had connections with other women there; but here I find none. I had amazing homeschool support & activities there; but here I come up at a loss. My children felt a belonging there; but here it seems that not even one of us 'fits'.
Over the last week I've come across Psalm 25 a number of times, and so I've read it several times over the last few days. It starts "O Lord, I give my life to you. I trust in you, my God....." I can't help but think in reading that passage how much am I trusting God if I allow myself to be paralyzed by fear?
Another verse I came across is Psalm 32:8 "The Lord says, I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you." I want with all of my being to believe that He has put me on His best road, but then I doubt every step that I take.
Then I read a devotional in my Bible, which included excerpt by Hannah Whitall Smith (from The God of All Comfort): "You need not be afraid to follow Him whithersoever He leads, for He always leads His sheep into green pastures and beside still waters. No matter though you may seem to yourself to be in the very midst of a desert, with nothing green about you inwardly or outwardly and you may think you have to make a long journey before you can get into any green pastures, the good Shepherd will turn the very place where you are into green pastures; for He has power to make the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose; and He has promised that "instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree"; and "in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert."
We have been waiting individually and as a family to be led into the 'green pastures and beside still waters.' I had my own thoughts and ideas that after our (brief) stay here in Minnesota, God would lead us on and then we'd really be in the greenest, most stable part of our lives. Then I will finally just be able to breathe. But I read that passage and realize that maybe this is what God has planned for us. My mind is still trying to grasp the idea that this desert I am in could 'blossom as the rose'. I'll be honest - I don't see it. The stubborn dreamer in me won't let go of my own mind's picture of the life I so desire to live. But another small part of my heart is intrigued and I wonder at the possibilities that the creator of the heavens and earth could work in and through my life. Yet they are possibilities that can only be created if I give up my life and fear (and that stubborn streak) and trust Him.
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