Another year older ...

February is a busy month in our home ... we finish the month off with James' birthday. This year has been a birthday like no other for my sweet husband. It seems nearly too complicated to explain but I will do my best.

For the last two years, I have not recognized our family. I knew that many changes had taken place but I also knew that God had called us to each one of those changes! He wants us to care for orphans and we believed that we were answering a calling when we pursued our adoptions. It just did not make sense that we were drifting so far from what we knew to be true in our lives. We had left our home church, we had stopped having people into our home, our house was becoming disorganized, I could care less what everyone was wearing ... it was just as if I was living a whole new life, one I did not want to live.

For two years I have thought that it was truly my fault that our family and home was falling in around us. I thought that I had pressured too much about adopting and had forced this idea on our family rather than it being out of obedience. I knew that my husband was not happy and I honestly thought that it was because of our adoptions. I knew that there was nothing we could do to change that now and I began to draw away from the Lord myself. That did NOT help matters in our home! We had once all been so close to the Lord.

You see, to completely understand you would have to kind of know a bit about our past. When my husband left the military and we moved back home, we came to know Christ as a family and not just as individuals. Our lives changed and during that time my husband felt a call to be a youth pastor. We knew that in order for that to happen, we had to go back into the military. Don't ask me why, we just knew that was what we were supposed to do. The Lord spoke clearly to us that we were to go back in the military and He would station us back in our old duty station and that from there my husband would be in youth ministry. I will have to share with you another time all the details God worked out on our behalf but in the end, that was exactly what happened.

Ministry was our lives. As a matter of fact, I remember when people would ask how the military was going and I would think, "oh ya, my husband is in the military ..." It really was a very small part of our lives compared to ministry and my husband has ALWAYS deployed. He has never been in a true "shore duty" command and the Lord has blessed him in his work. That was just how things worked and I am so very grateful for those years. I cannot even place my finger on how and when that changed for us, but change it did. It was a group of things over a course of time. Fortunately, I had been beginning to feel the Lord draw me close the last couple months and I felt especially drawn to pray for my husband.

It just so happens that in the last few weeks the Lord was pursuing James, and He did so with a passion. James knew that exactly what the Lord was calling him to but never once shared that with me. I received a phone call from a friend of ours about a month ago and before we got off the phone he said, "James just needs to get out of the military and move up here, there is a church that needs him." I brought that statement up to James and he blew me off. It just so happened that the Lord had many people bring up ministry to James over the course of a couple weeks and by the end of the third week we went out to breakfast together. James asked me what I wanted him to do when he got out of the military. I have always refused to answer this question since I always wanted James to decide for himself but this morning the words rolled freely. I told him that I knew I did not want him working a 9-5 job and that I believed that he was gifted with building things and had a sudden desire to cook for people because the Lord was preparing him to care for people through ministry and work in the mission field.

The day of his birthday I had gotten us tickets to go to a marriage conference. The Lord was not speaking to our marriage at all that day ... every speaker was telling us about where the Lord wanted us in ministry. We went to dinner that night with friends who do not attend church. In their card they mentioned how James would make such a great pastor. My poor husband could hardly drive home he was so moved by the Holy Spirit. I encouraged him to call some friends and ask them for prayer and guidance, he said he couldn't because he knew what their advice would be :)

That next day we heard a sermon on Jonah and we both shook our heads in agreement. We knew that as we have been running from God's calling to ministry that our poor family has been riding out a storm. James turned to me and said, "I think I just got thrown over board this week and I am now in the whale!" He was right, the storm has calmed. I cannot explain it but I feel like "us" again. Things are slowly getting into order but most of all I feel like I can breath. My spirit is calm and at peace just knowing that we are not running from God's calling. We do not know what each little piece looks like but we will be obedient to what He lays before us.

Happy birthday my sweet husband. I know that you feared you were not good enough, wise enough or kind enough to be a pastor ... I am so grateful that only God will get the glory then as you walk out His calling in your life!!!!!! I love you :)