My former self truly loved the therapeutic nature of shopping. Touching fabrics really soothed any sensory issues I won't admit to having. Four children later, shopping has become a source of antagonism. I really want to, but I despise it, because shopping with children is simply horrific. I am confident they make it horrific on purpose. The whole experience would be more pleasant and FASTER if they would just cooperate and follow simple direction. But, toddlers.
I was the most headstrong person I knew, until I met my children. My youngest is barely three, and hangs right there with the rest.
I was ready to leave the store and she refused. For some reason, despite for screams and demands for the past ten minutes, she was suddenly happy right where she was.
"Em! We are leaving now! Come on!"
"NO!"
"Emme! Mommy is leaving. If you don't come, I will come and get you and you will be in trouble."
"NOOOOOOO!"
She dug her heels in the ground and screamed at me like I was hurting her.
Moments like this are always humbling and also a big slap in the face. This particular moment, her disobedience was an epiphany into all that I had been doing wrong my entire life.
I had been digging my heels in the ground for the past seventeen years. I became comfortable. I was safe. But God told me to go.
Go! Be a conservative at a liberal woman's college in a Bible town in Virginia.
Go! Marry a man you have only dated several months, who will turn your life upside down.
Go the prairie lands and meet people who will change your heart forever.
Go! Have a baby before you are ready!
Go have a second baby, way before you figured out what to do with the first.
Go buy a house in a new town in Virginia. And live there. Alone. While your mother is dying.
Go to the largest military base in the United States and learn what it really means to be married.
Each and every time, I dug my heels in the ground and resisted. I did not want to be where I was, but the moment I was told to "Go!" I stopped. I planted my feet in the ground and I made everything so unpleasant. I refused to open my arms to embrace what was presented before me.
I picked Em up and carried her from the store, her screams echoed through the empty mall.
Once again, I am faced with a moment of heel digging. God is sending us across the ocean.
Go!
I refused to believe that God's plan and the Army's plan was one in the same.
Go! Go to Germany!
After a week of being a complete emotional train wreck, a friend brought me a danish with a note that said "everything will be okay." Months have passed since we first found out about our move and in my heart I know everything will be okay. I know that my sweet friend holds the words of security and grace that only Jesus can provide.
Isaiah 46:3-4
...I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth.
Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am he,
I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and rescue you.
Everything will be fine, and through each moment I will be picked up by God and carried through, just as I carried my sweet baby.
My heart still fights with my flesh, because we live in a fallen world. This whole experience is teaching me to trust in the sovereignty of God more than I ever have. But above all, I go.
2 Corinthians 12:9
"My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power has been made perfect in your weakness."
Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses,
so that Christ's power may rest on me.
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