Pulling of a thread

Well, I am still here.  Still alive.  Still own a computer.  Just not sure what happened between my last post and now.  Well, many things I guess.  Since my 5 readers really already know my life, I will say the summer was one of the greatest and hardest I have ever known.  Our personal journey from January leading up to summer was painful, exciting, stretching, hard, awesome.  There were tears, butterflies in our stomachs, and hopes placed in our hearts that I am not sure we had ever thought.  I have had the privilege of having my dream job.  I ran a children's theater company.  The same one that made me fall in love with theater in the first place.  It was a dream of mine.  And in January, God began to plant new dreams.  To show me new places that He wanted me to go and serve.  And I thought, "really?"  I was sort of like Moses.....I found a lot of objections.  And yet, the call never changed.  The invitation to Him never changed.  And so I began the journey of letting go and allowing the Lord to unravel and piece together.  I learned so much of trusting Him, staying true to the promise, and just plain walking with one foot in front of the other even when you aren't sure where you are headed.  Planning an awesome summer, while knowing it might be your last was painful.  I learned a new spiritual discipline; fasting.  It was beautiful.  Remarkable.  And so the summer came.  Kids came.  Staff came.  Then the untying came in order to birth a new future and a new legacy.  And really....it didn't all come to be until the very end.  Wasn't how I thought it to be.  I had to surrender my perfectly laid plans.  It didn't end how I had hoped but I had to also give that back to the Lord.  This was His and not mine.  It wasn't about me.  And then the pause.  The quiet. Now what? You asked me to release.  I did.  And..... (Insert where I learn the lesson that God isn't an "If You, Then I" kind of guy) Oh! I began looking back 5 years.  Back when He called us to adoption.  Then when He called me to run camp.  Then when He called us to wait.  Then when He called me to release camp.  This is all a pulling of a thread.  God so gently began roughing up our perfect little quilt of the life that we pictured.  The life we were comfortable with.  The life we were just living.  And He just gave a gentle tug of one thread:  adoption.  And that began an unraveling of sorts for us.  An eye opening time.  In January we thought we knew exactly where God was calling us and how He was going to use us:  Mission work.  And while where we thought we were headed wasn't where God was taking us, it wasn't a wasted ask.  God used that moment to unify our hearts.  He used that time to have us lift our heads up from where we were and see the possibilities of where we could be used and how we could be used.  Can I say to the Lord, "I just want to get behind you.  I am tired of walking and asking you to get behind me"  We are ready to get behind Him in whatever way that might look.  And so now, I am just in complete (most days) submission to the tug of every thread.  He has given me tasks do right now.  He has given Dave tasks to do right now.    With all of that I am so thrilled that in God's great humor He gave me the name for this blog years ago as "Journey to 838".  Because it surely has been a journey.  One I have never imagined.  One that I am not sure I would have written.  But every part.  Every part.  Has been this unraveling that I know for sure I will never get over.