Hey all. Yep, I’m still here. I still exist. But what a crazy past couple of months it has been. If I blogged every time I wanted to (granted, I didn’t have the emotional energy), you all would have been bombarded by a whole roller coaster of crazy emotions. Luckily, you were spared and now, you get the condensed version. (But beware, it’s still long)
Since high school, I’ve had this passionate draw towards other cultures and specifically Europe. I was blessed to travel to Germany on two short-term trips and then I got to live there for a year between high school and college. Well, that only poured gasoline on the fire in my heart to reside in and love on the people of Europe. After my first year of college in Texas, I had to get away (staying put for too long is not one of my strong suits, I’ve come to discover) so I went to live in Costa Rica for a month to study Spanish – great language experience, not so great living experience. I went back to school and conveniently, my major required me to study abroad in a Spanish-speaking, European country (good planning on my part, eh?), so I trekked off to Spain my junior year of college for a semester. All of my stints in Europe were heavily sprinkled with opportunities to travel the continent (and even to Africa) and I loved every minute of it. Something about traveling makes me feel alive, and parts of me I didn’t know existed were beautifully revealed during my time in Europe. In some ways, I feel like I am the best version of me when I am living over there.
So that’s the back story to the past tumultuous few months.
Since first dating, Kurt and I have discussed the possibility of us living overseas one day. This was something that wasn’t so much a goal (as that seems like an intentional decision) as it was an expected and natural path for me. Perhaps it was more of a goal for Kurt, to keep his wife happy. ;) But soon, my dream became our dream and we fully expected to be heading to Europe after our first few years of marriage. Last summer, things started lining up for us to possibly move to Prague to work alongside a friend of ours at a youth hostel. We posted pics on our bulletin boards to keep our eyes on the prize and researched places to live and the Czech culture. We started conversing by email with our friend who had recently moved his life there…these emails moved from “yea, totally…someday we should definitely do that” to “Hey, how do you feel about us coming over in the Spring” to “come on! We’d love to have you”. Then in October, we got an email that seemed to come out of left field: “We can’t really guarantee you anything. Perhaps you should look elsewhere”.
Now what?
Literally, conversations about moving to Prague with this guy had been happening for almost 4 years (granted, many were with a “What if one day…” kind of tone), but still…we had kind of banked on this. So we were hit with bump-in-the-road #1. Honestly, though, after the initial shock, our response was excitement. It was as if we had limited ourselves to hostel work in Prague for so long, that we never even considered other possibilities. Starting fresh off our new-found excitement, I camped myself in our backyard one day with a picnic blanket, a notebook, and my computer and under the shade of our pine trees, I researched my heart out. I googled, contacted friends, stalked, and googled some more. I found some really amazing organizations we could travel with, some really off the wall things we could do, and even came up with my own hare-brained idea of traveling on our own, volunteering at a different place every month all over Europe. After all the dreaming and scheming, we came across an opportunity that truly put a fire in our bellies. So many things seemed to line up: our passions, our pasts, our talents, our connections, our education. The crazy thing was that the deadline to apply was in 5 days. As much as we wanted to apply that day, that minute, we decided to wait it out over the weekend, pray about it, and seek wise council. After the weekend, every light was green and we went for it. We soon got an interview which required us to head to Atlanta, GA and off we went! We had to drive 28-hours round-trip and attend our interview all within 3 days. It was quite the road-trip, but a fun experience nonetheless. We left the interview completely clueless as to how the interviewer felt about us, but we were pretty convinced we were shoe-ins. The guy told us we’d hear back within 2 weeks but we could be getting on a plane as soon as 10 days. So we returned home and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Let me tell you, it is really hard to live in the present when you’re waiting for your future. And even harder when you expect to be moving across the world, but aren’t guaranteed that.
Finally, almost 2 months later and many attempted follow-ups on our part, we got a “no” at the wee hour of 6am. At first, probably because I’m not very awake in the morning, it didn’t hit me as hard as I thought it would. The rest of that day though, it kept hitting harder and harder. And then the month following, it felt as if it would hit me constantly with the force of hurricane winds. Always hitting, never knowing from which direction it would strike. There were so many reasons for my reaction. Here are just a few:
- I had put entirely too much confidence in a process that warranted no confidence at all and was a gamble from the start.
- I didn’t trust that God had my future…I look at a lot of God-fearing people that have it rough and I know that we’re not promised an always happy, dream-like life. For some it happens, for some it doesn’t.
- I was afraid that if we didn’t go now, we never would. I even told Kurt at one point that I was scared he wouldn’t go if there were any sacrifice to be made (kids, house, etc.)…we were as free as we’ll ever be at that point, and I didn’t trust that Kurt would go to the ends of the Earth for me. Literally.
- At the time (and sometimes still), the “no” felt like the death of a dream. Almost a life-long dream…basically the first dream I had of my own, as an adult. So much of my identity was wrapped up in my love for the nations and unknowingly, I had begun to take pride in the fact that I was “the girl that was going to move to Europe someday with her husband”.
I think it is safe to say, that emotionally, this was one of the lowest points of my life. Dramatic, I know. But true. The crazy thing is, that even in the midst of seeming silence from God, He was there. Working away. And it wasn’t until I fully surrendered my own control over life and my emotions that I was able to see that and was able to allow God to work through this crazy situation.
So after the news, I continued to put one foot in front of the other…I was fragile to say the least, but I think I did a decent job at moving forward as best as I could. I took a job as a nanny and was infinitely blessed by caring for others and being cared for by the family. We walked through some tough stuff together, from both parties, and sustained each other through tears and laughter. Most importantly for me, though, was how encouraged I was by their faith…when everything seemed to be falling apart around them, they continued to pray fervently and trust in the Lord’s goodness.
After struggling through my own inward-focused, faith-lacking mire, I decided to cling to the small amount of faith I had left and which was only really there because of this beautiful family I was working for (you see, I hadn’t lost faith in God, just in His work in my life)…I decided I’d use that nugget of faith, every last ounce, to commit to a day of fasting. This in and of itself is remarkable in that I have a pretty good relationship with food and don’t like to give it up if I don’t have to ;). In fact, I had only really fasted one other time in my life and it wasn’t for myself. So, fasting for myself was foreign and it felt awkward. I didn’t really want to do it, but somewhere in me, I knew it would be good for me. I knew, in a strange way, that this is where healing would begin.
Crazy enough, I unexpectedly got the day off which allowed me to really spend time studying, reading, praying, and listening (and not eating, ha). I had decided that morning that I would end the fast at 4pm, so I had a pretty full day of really honest time of reflecting inwardly and putting my thoughts and concerns before the Lord. It was so good. I was feeling so refreshed by it all and knew that no matter what, God was good and I was going to be OK. Even crazier, at 3:48 (or something like that), just a few minutes before the end of my fast, I got an email from an organization that I had dreamed of working for for years and to whom I had submitted an application a couple weeks before. They wanted to interview me! It is unreal how surrendering the things we hold so tightly to ends up being the best thing for us and so often, the very path to that thing.
Let’s fast-forward (tired of reading yet?)…I now have that job and am absolutely blown away by how much I love what I am doing and for the first time in a while, I feel like the puzzle pieces of who I am and what I am doing fit perfectly. If I had two dreams in life, it would be to live overseas with my husband and to work for an international non-profit…I may have had to give up one but I got the other, and I am so happy.
I won’t say there aren’t still days that I want so badly to be living overseas; there are days that I still wonder just what God was up to in allowing our hearts and desires to be so Europe-focused for so long. Honestly, I don’t get it all. But I’ve learned a few things from all of this:
- I know now, though, that God is good in all things and even though I don’t understand it all and can’t even begin wrapping my head around the theology, I trust that He is good. That’s my foundation and that’s what I’ll cling to.
- I can’t make judgments about what Kurt will and will not do in the future. I can only base my assessments on the now and what has already happened. Based on that, Kurt would literally give up his life for me. I love him so dearly and pray that I would do the same.
- My identity should not be the things I am doing or the things I will do, but rather, I should find my identity, joy, and contentment in who I am and who God is making me to be. Nothing else. I must rest in that and that alone, and my pride should not be in myself, but I should boast in the Lord and what He has done in me and in the world.
I’m realizing recently that God has to peel some people’s feet from the ground to get them to go, but He is literally gluing my feet to the ground to get me to stay and I know that I’ll grow in mighty ways because of it.
If you want to check out where I’m working, go here: www.water.cc. It is amazing. The organization I work with is doing incredible things all across the world and the people I work with are phenomenal.
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Mood: Thankful
Last Workout: 2 days ago – long walk with the hubby
Meals Cooked Recently: Lasagna and a rockin’ cheesecake
Current Book: When Helping Hurts