About three years ago, my family was content living in South Carolina close to my side of the family. We had JUST bought a house where we wanted to raise our family. Literally overnight, we were told that my husband's job position had basically evaporated unless he would move to Tennessee, like, the next day. We had lived in this same exact place before in Tennessee, but had been happy to relocate to South Carolina. He was basically sent back to work in a market in the company that he was content to leave behind two years prior.
Well, we made the decision that we had to make, and the next day I headed to Tennessee to find us a place to live. I found the best place I could on such short notice. Over the next week, we made arrangements and moved. Our firstborn son was 5 months old.
For the first year we lived there, all I could think about was moving back home (i.e.. anywhere in South Carolina). We definitely did not want to buy a house, because we knew we were going to try to relocate the first "right" opportunity that came along. I was not happy with the place I found for us to live in, and would spend hours each day on the internet looking for a different place to live that would feel more like home to me. NOTHING would ever pan out. Why? I prayed and prayed for God to show me another place that we could rent. Nothing. Nothing. I just could not understand why something so easy was so hard.
We lived in that house for two years. We brought our second child, this time a girl, home to that rental house. And, we were able to meet, and I believe be a significant blessing to one family in particular on our street. I know we would have never met any of those people on that street had it not been for the fact that God placed us there "for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14).
In late October of 2009, my husband got a call from the place that brought him into the business he was in. They called bearing the sad news that my husband's mentor, who was in his 50's, had experienced a series of unfortunate circumstances that had ultimately led to his death. They needed someone they trusted to take his place, and who was at the top of their list? Dave. (That's my husband, by the way. I just got permission to introduce him. :)).
Dave accepted and started his own business in collaboration with their business. He was able to leave the bad situation with his other job that had only gotten worse over time. Almost immediately after that, we were informed of a foreclosure in a nice, well-established neighborhood. We looked at it, fell in love with it, and were able to buy it. Basically, everything fell in to place just the way GOD planned it.
Now, aren't you glad that sometimes we don't get what we pray for? Isaiah 58:8-9 goes like this:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as far as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts." (ESV)
Ephesians 3:20 says that God is "able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think". Do you believe that? Has there ever been a time in your life when something like this has happened to you?
Maybe you don't understand the place you are in right now, or don't think you can make a difference where God has placed you. I still struggle with that, wondering how I will do anything great for God when I don't have anyone I can ask to watch my kids while I go out and change the world. The truth is though, if I am diligent in what God asks me to do, I am changing the world right here, one diaper at a time.
