Author: kristinjbrown

We were adopted by a stray cat several months ago. The kids were still in school at that time and Thadd and I were outside waiting for the bus to drop them off in the afternoon. We heard her before we saw her, the kind of friendly meow that beckons to you. She jumped up on the neighbor’s fence from the backyard, leapt down on our side and came trotting over to us. A small, gray, tiger-striped cat with just a dash of orange on her forehead. She let us pet her and then, when Addie and Jeremiah came home, we all found ourselves scrounging around for things to feed her. A bowl of milk, a piece of salami, a crust of bread (she didn’t care for that). And of course she kept coming back. I even accidentally happened to put a bag of cat food in the shopping cart soon after meeting her. Addie affectionately named her Maggie, which fit her perfectly. We continued to feed her and she stuck around.

A few weeks ago Maggie started to put on quite a bit of weight around her abdomen. My suspicions were confirmed one day when she let me put my hands around her belly and I felt an ever-so-slight kick. We watched her grow so pregnant that she couldn’t walk without waddling. We put a cardboard box and a towel out on our porch, just in case, and kept on checking on her. This past Saturday morning I went outside and Maggie showed up from our front bushes very much NOTpregnant. I called the kids and we began looking for the babies, which Addie found presently. Five tiny kittens huddled together behind a sago palm in front of our house.

Towards the end of the day, Maggie let us take the kittens to the box on our front porch. And there they stayed, their mama guarding and nursing them around the clock.

Every chance we get, we are out there watching the miracle.

The kids could stay out there for hours. Watching and petting them, picking them up, then putting them back when Maggie begins to nervously growl. The truth is, I could stay out there all day too. There is something deeply satisfying about a baby’s lustful quest for sustenance. Maggie purrs as we watch on. I have never seen her so content.

At night I put the kids to bed and the boys ask for the usual bedtime story as I scratch their backs. The books we had just read together never count. They want a made-up one. And about animals. Always animals. Usually, my mind is too tired to come up with anything interesting, but tonight is different. I find myself conjuring up scenes from my past when I was a little girl. About my first cat, Blue Eyes. I tell them about how I found him when I was four and how his owner gave him to me. How he was the sweetest cat ever, even though I would fold him in half. How he had the bluest eyes. How he had gotten out of the house one day and we couldn’t find him for a while. All of a sudden I was that bright-eyed little girl with the staticky hair.

“I remember being in the car on our way to the doctor, my mom driving my brother and I, when all of a sudden I heard my mom scream,” I paused and the boys sat up in bed, hanging onto every word.

“There on the side of the road was a dead cat, run over by a car. My mom wouldn’t let me see it, but she was sure it was Blue Eyes. I remember how my Uncle had come and picked him up and put him in a shoebox. He let me see him then, and even then I didn’t believe that it was my cat. It didn’t look like him, but all the adults were sure about it.

I remember how we had a little burial for him in the backyard. My dad, mom and I. My parents walked back inside the house, but I stood out there, sobbing. Right in front of the freshly-dug grave. I couldn’t believe this had happened. Death seemed so unnatural. I remember looking up and seeing my dad standing tall near the house looking at me. He started to walk toward me, a look of understanding on his face. I ran at him and he caught me and I wept into him-” my voice trailed off at this point as the distant memory enveloped me. A warm feeling overwhelmed and surprised me and I found myself fighting the tears. My daddy. I was overcome with feelings I had not felt in a long time. My two boys seemed fine with my ending the story at this point. Somehow they sensed the reverence of the moment. I sat there in the night thinking about my dad. His strength and kindness and protection. I kissed my boys and left the room.

I unlocked and opened the front door and sat down by the stray cat Maggie and her babies. I ran my hand through her soft fur as she purred lazily. And I thought about my daddy.

We were getting close to the visitors center at the South Rim. We had come far. 1300 miles in a truck pulling a travel trailer, three kids in the backseat, a flat tire miracle, a transmission scare (which turned out to be a fuel filter issue), changes of plans every day. But we had finally made it!

“Close your eyes,” Jason said,  “and I’ll lead you there.”

We had met my Uncle Ernie and Aunt Rose and my two cousins in Flagstaff the day before. I asked Aunt Rose to keep an eye on the kids while Jason led me to the rim. Didn’t want them jumping in or anything.

Now I have to explain that ever since growing up in the mountains of Latin America, the mountains have been in my blood. Living in the lowlands for 15 years have made me appreciate any kind of topography whatsoever. As we drove into the hills of San Antonio and the elevation began to change, my soul began to breathe deep. As we continued through southwest Texas and up through New Mexico and Arizona it just got better.

But even a mountain lover is not prepared for the Grand Canyon.

I’ve seen the photos. Bought books and checked others out at the library. Heard personal testimony of the greatness and beauty. My expectations were pretty high. But I was blindsided by a thought, “What if it’s not as great as what everyone says? What if I’m disappointed?” A crazy thought for sure, but as I was led down the path to the look-out I wondered just what my reaction would be.

It was overcast and the rain would gently come and go. I looked down at the ground as we walked and we finally came to a place everyone agreed upon. I heard a few exclamations from my children as we approached and Thaddaeus yelled out, “Is this the Grand Canyon?!” Jason put my hand on the metal guard rail and I could feel all eyes looking at me.

“OK, open your eyes.”

And this is when all words fail me. No description does justice to what I experienced at that moment. My first thought was, “Are you kidding me? Is this real?” The immensity and beauty and majesty and awesomeness. The way the sun hit the side of the canyon and enflamed it red, and then the layers upon layers and all the colors. The blue and orange and red and purple. The treacherous cliffs and the chasm stretching out beyond what my eyes could see. The mists and the rain and the sky in all array of colors above. Ah, language! How I butcher the beauty!

I have only had one other similar experience. The only other moment of absolute disbelief and amazement was when I held my baby girl for the first time. Both of those times I was overcome by involuntary tears.

The Grand Canyon exceeded my highest expectations.

We went back to camp to fix dinner that evening, but hurried back to get a view of the canyon during sunset. As we pulled up we noticed a double rainbow in the steel gray clouds. We ran frantically to the rim with the camera and were able to take some shots in a tiny window of time before the clouds covered the rainbows from sight.

To see the sign of God’s covenant to the earth, two colored bows, stretched over one of the greatest evidences of a worldwide flood was overwhelming.

I was overcome by God’s great love for me. That I could get to see his handiwork like this! There are no words.

It was the night before the first day at a new school. I came in her room to tuck her in and pray with her about the school and the people and the bus ride home. But she had other things on her mind.

“Mommy,” Addie began, “How do you ask Jesus to be your Savior? I really want to, but I don’t know how.”

The boys were in the other room fighting over pajamas. What had my daughter just asked me? My eyes widened at the realization of the moment. I had not anticipated this conversation that night. I asked her to wait as I ran downstairs to tell Jason to tend to the boys and I grabbed my tattered, purple Bible.

Running upstairs, I breathed a prayer that God would give me words to describe the great mystery of salvation only found in Jesus Christ. The salvation that had changed my life forever. And Jason’s.

I came into her room, the room Jason and I only a few weeks back had prayed over as we dedicated the rooms in our new home to the Lord. I closed the door and sat on her bed. And her eyes were urgent with anticipation. I took a deep breath and began to talk about the gospel. The good news that Jesus had come to earth to live and die and rise again to make us new and clean and take away our sins and give us a new life. It is so simple. And the most powerful thing in the world.

But she has heard this good news since she was a tiny girl. I remember her telling it to Jeremiah when she was three. Telling him all about the garden of Eden and Adam and Eve and the first sin and how God had to send Jesus to come rescue us.

But this day was different. This day Addie wanted a part of the story. She wanted Jesus to save HER.

And so as best as I could, I explained to her that all you have to do is ask Jesus to save you. You turn from the old way of life to the new way. You turn from sin and turn to Jesus.

I asked her if she wanted to kneel with me by her bed and pray. She hopped off fast and we knelt together, mother and daughter, as I helped her communicate to God that she was turning from sin to Jesus. From death to life. She was beaming with joy when we finished. And I found myself dizzy with the privilege of leading my little girl to Jesus.

I was suddenly struck by a realization as I opened my Bible to the place where I had recorded when I prayed to ask Jesus to save me as a little girl. January 6, 1988. I was eight years old. This day was January 7, 2013 and Addie was also eight years old. But my birthday is December 11 and my daughter’s is December 12. This means that we both chose to follow Jesus when we were the exact age. To the very day! This is no small thing. A precious detail in both of our stories to show that this was completely God’s timing and not my own. A gift from Him.

How in the world do you impart faith to your children?

I had long felt the pressure to lead Addie into that “sinner’s prayer”. But, I can’t make my children choose Jesus! All I could do was pray on my face for the salvation of my children and live and speak and love like Jesus. That is it.

God did everything in Addie’s life. He caused her heart to seek His. My boys will have a different experience that their sister’s. But God is able to reach them exactly as they understand and I will keep loving and praying for them. O what a holy calling to be a mother! And a discipline in self-control to let the Holy Spirit do His job.

On Pentecost Sunday two weeks ago now, we all watched as Addie Rose chose to tell the world that she has chosen Jesus over all other things. Through baptism. Buried with Christ in the likeness of his death, raised to walk in newness of life.

We are home!  After 17 months living with extended family, 14 months studying for paramedic class, 5 attempts to purchasing houses vastly different from each other, and countless walks around the subdivision offering desperate tears to the God that continued to close doors, we were given the key to a beautiful home in Katy, TX.

Life is surreal.  I wake up in the morning and pour hot coffee and sit in my living room on a chair we bought from craigslist.  The one with the cat scratches.  I smile silly and just look up the stairs and wait as they come down with messy hair and morning breath.  Jeremiah, his red fleece blanket wrapped around him, descends slowly.  His eyes sparkle joy.  He crawls on my lap and snuggles.  He tries to suck his thumb without my noticing.

He takes it out just long enough to manage, “I love our house, Mommy.”  The thumb goes back in.

My smile is still plastered over my giddy face.  I bring my coffee cup carefully around him and set it up on the little bookcase Jason made a few years ago.  I kiss my son’s head.  “God gave you the desire of your heart, Jeremiah.”

He looks at me in question and I point up from where he has just come from.  And he understands slowly as a smile curls from around the thumb.  “Stairs!” he exclaims.

And we rejoice together as we sit there because stairs is a big thing.  A longing fulfilled.  Like drinking cool water in a desert.  No.  Rather like coming from the desert to the promised land.

 

Jason has these self-watering containers in the backyard where he plants tomato seedlings.  The second planting season in Houston is mid-September so he cut down the old Cherokee Purple and the Sugar Lump plants that were dying away, but he saved the very tops of them that were new growth, growing out of the old.  And he replanted them in the containers.  Just to see what would happen.

Two weeks later they were vibrant with growth, especially one of them.  The one in the blue container.  I would watch it every day as the days turned more bearable and you could enjoy sitting outside again, a cool breeze occasionally interrupting the warmth.  A few days later I noticed there were already yellow flowers throughout the tomato plant.  This plant was unbelievable.  Life was overtaking it and it was thriving.  I told Jason about the flowers, but he had already seen them.

“Wait.  What are you doing?” I asked in horror.  He was pinching the flowers off one by one.  The flowers that would turn into fruit.

He smiled at me and said, “This plant’s not ready for fruit yet.  If I don’t prune it, all the energy will go towards fruit and then the growth of the plant will become stunted.  The energy needs to go to the roots.  Let it build up the plant.  Then it will be ready after a while to produce fruit.  A lot of fruit.”

My frown slowly turned upward as the truth of the farmer’s words hit me.  Pruning to be more fruitful.  Where had I heard that before?

I remember having a phone conversation with my dear friend Ruth several years ago.  I was in the kitchen on my cell phone amid dirty sippy cups and sticky countertops, stealing a bit of time away during a baby’s nap.  And I was relaying to her my earnest desire to serve the Lord in ministry.  How it seemed like all of my Bible college friends were just passing us by and doing incredible things for God.  And here I was, a Carpenter’s wife having a kid every two years.  Not that I discounted the ministry of motherhood.  I just sensed there was more that I was made for.  This calling of a life of being poured out doing something big.

“Maybe you’re not ready yet,” Ruth said to me.

I had opened my mouth, but couldn’t say anything to that.  I had sometimes feared that I had missed God’s call upon my life.  But the thought of not being ready for the call was something entirely different than missing it all together.  I thought I was ready.  Why wouldn’t I be?  I’ve been to Bible school, grew up on the mission field, loved Jesus for as long as I can remember.  Not ready yet?  But then did I really have the right to determine my own readiness?

A month later I look at that same, pruned Sugar Lump tomato plant in the blue container.  And it towers over the other plants in the Autumn garden.  And it is heavy as can be with abundant fruit.

I sat on Jeremiah’s bed while all three of my children lay across the length of his twin size trundle.  Legs curled and bodies bunched, special blankets and pillows, stuffed animals crowded around them.  They had all decided that they would sleep there that whole night.  Addie lay in the middle between the brothers.  Taking up most of the room.

I was telling them about the great day that Jesus would return to the earth.  The day the trumpet would blast signaling the coming of the King.  The day those who love Him would rise to meet Him in the air.

We heard a noise coming from the kitchen (probably my father-in-law scrounging up a snack or something).  Thadd shot up from the bed, “Is dat Jesus?!” he exclaimed.  “De tumpet?”  I could make out wide eyes in the dimly lit room.

“No baby,” I replied with a smile, “that’s probably just Papa.”

I prayed with them, tickled backs and sang songs like they always asked for and then kissed them in a row.  Closing the door, I wondered how long it would be before Jeremiah moved over to his brother’s bed so he could stretch out his legs.

I wondered other things too.  Like what would this world be like for my children as they grew up in it.  The presidential election drawing nigh brought so many questions to my mind.  The economy seemed to be crumbling beneath us, and politicians raged and promised, each side attacking the other and offering the answer to the nation’s problems.  It seemed to be this big game, with the lives of people at stake.  The conventions, republican and democratic, being at polar odds with one another in value and direction.

And then these attacks on the embassy in Egypt and Libya and Yemen?!  Peace and safety are far cries these days.  Like the nations are arranging themselves for a final apocalypse.  And Israel is involved, and I am not sure what part the United States plays exactly.  It’s enough to make a sensible citizen want to run out to Montana and buy a few acres and live out the rest of her days self-sufficient and dependent upon the land for her livelihood.  To go hide and wait for the return of the King.  I mean, it all sounds very tempting.  Very tempting.

But deep down there is this prodding within that moves me to believe that there is a great work to be done.  A work that has been prepared just for me since the beginning of time.  For such a time as this.  In these unstable times God is calling me to Himself.  To follow Him where He is at work.  And it doesn’t look like he’s leading us to bury our heads in the sand and hide while the world self-destructs and then the trumpet sounds, bringing forth the consummation of all things.  While we, all the while, are preserved from suffering.

No.  I think the work the Lord has for us to do is dirty and bloody and difficult.  A work that will involve a death of what I hold dear.  A giving up of all the gods that I have set up before Him.  A great call to love those who are most difficult to love during days of hate.  A stretching of my comfortable, complacent Christian life, giving up control and plans and boxy living.  And I am scared to death.

But what do I stand to gain?

Unspeakable joy.  Peace.  Life.  Purpose.  The coming to the complete end of myself to be strengthened thoroughly by the power of God.  Growing in faith and trust.  Experiencing the Lord’s presence and provision because I place myself in a position of desperation.  Seeing change in myself.  Living the cross.  And one day gaining riches in heaven.  Riches not worth comparing with what I have given up here on earth.

A few days after the slumber party on the trundle bed, I sat outside watching my youngest son swing on his swing while the humming birds darted in and out at the feeders above my head.

“When is God coming back?” Thadd asked me.  His little face gazed up at the clouds in the sky.

“Soon,” I replied.  Soon.  But until that day, there was work to be done.

I pulled on new purple running shoes.  I tied them with a vengeance and pulled my hair up hastily in a pony tail.

“I’m running,” I told Jason curtly.  I couldn’t even look him in the eyes.

I forced my way into the humid night air and started running for the first time in four years.  My feet were light and my legs remembered what to do in spite of the weight of my anger.  I ran fast and hard and my mind re-played the events of the day.

I had found the house we were to move into.  I knew it from the first moment I walked in as we made our way around the owner who bounced a baby on her hip apologizing for the mess the workers had made up in the master bathroom.  A stairway ascended on the left at the entrance to the house.  All four bedrooms up, along with the laundry room.  To the right french doors opened into an office with built-in bookshelves.  After that straight down the hall in the middle of the house was the dining room on the right, then the kitchen with the den on the opposite side, built-in shelving surrounding the fireplace.  The backyard, a very large backyard, was accessible through the breakfast room.  We filed through the house, Jason, our realtor Susan and myself.  And I tried to suppress the giddiness I felt.  This was it.  This was our house.  And it was actually in the same price range as the other houses we had looked at that day.  The other houses with the animal smells.

A frog jumped across the sidewalk and I leapt sideways so as to keep my new shoes from unnecessary disaster.  There are frogs everywhere these days.  Frogs and mosquitoes.  For this is Houston, TX.  The place where you swim through the August night with running shoes on.  I had only been running for a few minutes and already I was drenched in sweat.   But it felt good to be out there.  The blood in my veins raging with life and pushing the oxygen everywhere.  I felt free to wrestle with my anger.

I had sat in Susan’s office that morning while Jason stood because he couldn’t find another unoccupied chair in the building.  She was printing off comps in the area of the house I was certain was to be ours.  But Jason had a different perspective and upon reviewing the paper, his doubts in the house were confirmed.  We studied the comps, our heads banded together in concentration as I had risen from my seat, the paper in my hands.  But it didn’t look promising.  The house had been bought for a song a few years before and the owners had done some work to it (work which my carpenter husband cringed at) and were now selling the house at the top of the market value.  The numbers spoke for themselves, but Susan suggested we get some lunch and talk about it and then call her back with a decision.  Or an offer.  Preferably an offer.

So we went to Chick Fil A, during possibly the busiest time of its career, and decided to sit and talk about the house.  Our kids were in Dallas with my parents that week.  You would think we would have gone somewhere a little less kid friendly.  But no, Chick Fil A with the lines and the kids and the noise.  I looked at my man, after a prayer of thanks for the chicken, and still holding his hand I spoke dogmatically, “This is the house we are going to buy.”  He had looked at me painfully and shook his head.  I started spouting all of the reasons it was right for us and he just listened and waited until I was finished and then he began to tell me the reasons it was wrong for us, the biggest reason being the price which would not benefit resale.  And it went on like this all day long.  Me whining, pleading, crying as I tried to make him see what was so clear to me.  And he calmly and lovingly (O how I hated that!) held his ground.

Didn’t I deserve this house?  Didn’t our family deserve this?  We had been living with Jason’s parents for one year.  One year!  And our house in Dallas was finally being sold and we could finally purchase a home!  I turned to run around the subdivision lake and as I ran words came softly to my heart.  Words that I did not welcome and that I clenched my fists to.  Because I knew who was speaking them to me and it was not what I wanted to hear.

“It’s not about you.”

It surprised me as I heard myself involuntarily sobbing into the night.  I knew what I had to do, but I bloody battled it.  I balled my hands tighter and swung them faster at my side, picked up the pace.

My sweet friend Gilda and her husband Rudy had met us to pray over us just a week before.  “You are in a race,” she had spoken to us wisely.  At that time we still had not known where in Houston we were to even look for a house.  The day after we met to pray together God made clear to Jason that we were to look in Katy, TX for our home.  Though still a long commute to work, it would keep us close to family and in the neighborhood of our church home.  And that is what we need for we have been called to foster care and adoption.

My heart began to soften as I thought about our calling.  And I could see with new eyes the ugliness of my heart.  I had found something I wanted.  And it was something good, but my grip on it was deadly.  It was desire gone viral.

“O God,” I prayed into the night.  My tears mingling with sweat.  I paused before the final surrender and I could sense His goodness surrounding me.  I could trust Him with my desires.  And then finally, softly I broke.  “I will submit to you.  I lay down my desires and entrust my heart to you.”

The freedom of submission swooned my heart to peace.  I set back for home.

I wrote this three years ago for Mother’s Day:

I look with uncertainty at the project at hand, the wriggling grub worm unaware of his destiny.  “I can do it,” my daughter tells me matter-of-factly.  The warm wind blows her golden hair across her face.  Confidently, she takes the unsuspecting worm and baits him from end to end on her fishhook.  Her four year-old fingers move with precision.  With amazement I look upon my little girl, so eager to learn and experience life.  Her clear eyes dance, scanning the waters of the small pond before us.  I gently take her fishing rod and cast as far as I can.  She quickly reaches for the pole and begins to reel in her line with the passion of childhood.  I wrap my arms around her and whisper into her ear, “I’m so proud of you!”

“Mommy watch this!”  he exclaims with pride.  His volume rises with each word he pronounces.  I turn from the wreckage of laundry scattered across the floor.  His small hand grabs for mine.  It’s sticky.  He pulls me around the corner.  He releases my hand and his feet start to prance in anticipation.  In a flash he advances full speed at his target.  He leaps aggressively and is soon caught up in strong arms.  Flying, rolling, squealing, flailing, they’re everywhere.  His eyes are shining, so full of life, revealing his greatest passion.  My heart swells with indescribable joy as I watch them.  My son and his hero, his daddy.

I hear a cry in the night and I lurch out of bed, unstable yet on my feet, disoriented.  I blindly make my way to his side.  I lift him up and is expectation overwhelms him.  He knows what comes.  Grunting and rooting he shakes his tiny head and his fingers make their way to his expectant lips, pursed and desperate.  He suckles vigorously, his passion for life consuming him.  I take it all in.  His little hands, his little feet, the feel of him snuggled up to me, his smell – so new, so fresh.  His one persistent objective is a quest for life.  I fight back tears as I urgently whisper into the night, “Please don’t grow.  Please don’t change!”

Right after my sixteenth birthday, as the people of Brookfield, IL began to take their Christmas lights down from their snow-dusted roofs, just before the new year of 1996, my family and I moved to San Jose, Costa Rica.

We knew we would not be there long.  Guatemala was our final destination and that was what we had planned for.  My father, dramatically changing occupations from salesman to missionary, underwent three long years of graduate school at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, two of which involved trekking the United States visiting people and churches to raise support so we could be involved in Christian radio in Guatemala City.

For calling is not fulfilled without preparation.

Our mission board required that my parents spend time in language school learning the language before engaging in the ministry.  And San Jose, Costa Rica was a city riveted with language institutes.  But the thing was, we already knew Spanish.  You see, we were living in Mexico when my father sensed his calling into missions.  But still, the agency persisted and so we agreed and made the move.

Dad and Mom, myself, Ryan who was 12, Andrian almost 3 and baby Autumn 3 months old.

We never thought we would be there for longer than 6 months, but we ended up staying a full year in the peaceful land of Costa Rica.  While my parents studied Spanish at the the Instituto de Lengua Española, Ryan and I attended school at Sojourn Academy.  A tiny school for grades kindergarten through high school, Sojourn was the place the missionary kids went during their parents’ preparation for ministry in order to go to various countries throughout Central and South America.  It really was like a glorified homeschool co-op with A Beka being the main curriculum.  Teachers were assigned to two to three grades per classroom and the high school delivered two teachers.  One for Math/Science and one for English/History.  The classrooms all faced a common outside corridor with an exotic garden of native plants in the middle.  Quite the contrast to the flurry of life in public high school in Illinois.

Perhaps it would have been easy to discount that year as altogether unnecessary or a waste of precious time.  I mean, when I finally arrived in Guatemala I realized that an entire semester of Geometry and Geography taken at Sojourn did not count for my high school credit and had to be retaken at the missionary school there in Guatemala City.  True, my parents honed in their Spanish skills, but they would have been fine without a year at language school.  Another move, another transition, another house.  Was it even healthy for a family with kids to uproot again?

But then I think of what I would have missed out on had we skipped that period in our lives.  Friends.  Like I had never had before.  Friends that drew close just because we knew that our time together was short and we had better make the most of it.  Friends that would not have found each other had we not been thrown together.  Friendships that would last.  And then there was Mr. Loren Wilbur, my English teacher.  My favorite teacher of all time.  He was the one who taught me to read the great books.  And because of our miniscule classes, he actually took the time to sit down with me and counsel me on my writing.  He was the kind of teacher that inspires you to greatness.  And I would have missed that.

Oh I could go on and on about what I gained that year.  Running three times a week with a lady from our mission and being unknowingly mentored by her wisdom.  Enjoying my family without outside pressures of activity.  Not to mention the things we experienced like soaking in natural hot springs while watching a volcano erupt before us.  Exploring a dozen beautiful beaches.  Eating all manner of strangely delicious fruit.  Experiencing the process of coffee.  Climbing mountains.  Kissing monkeys.  Getting rained on.  A lot.  Riding in taxis everywhere we went.

Somehow that waste of time became my favorite year.

Of course, that was Costa Rica.  And who could not endure a year of preparation in paradise?  I look at our situation now and inwardly cringe that   I even dared to write about my experiences at Sojourn because it would seem they are to be envied compared to our current outlook.  We live in Houston, TX.  In Jason’s parents’ house.  Still.  Three children.  Real estate ghosts from our past haunting us.  House loan prospects dim.  What is this year we have been experiencing?  Our dreams are still strong and our calling continues to take shape.  But this place where we cannot see the end for the wall that is before us, can it be of any good whatsoever?

It is Sojourn Academy.  Without the exotic paradise.

And yet, something stirs within my soul.  The slow outbreak of hope and faint echo of faith that this time, this wait is preparatory.  And even, dare I believe, exceedingly good for me.  For all of us.  For this season of sojourn paves the way to our calling.