My mother says...

My mother has always been a source of encouragement for me. She usually has something to help me stay on track, or is able to gently redirect me if I am way off track. I have been calling her daily over the past week. Sometimes I just need to hear that moving is never easy, and when you have 25 days to get everything you own packed or purged, go on holidays with family, and drive 2, 000 km it is downright hard.

Two days ago she said to me, "Right now every problem that comes along makes you go, 'Oh no, what now?', but eventually you get to the place where a new problem makes you say, 'Okay, how will we deal with this one?'" That was when it really hit me that just because something is God's purpose for your life doesn't guarantee that it will be easy. In fact, if I am following God's purpose it makes sense that it will be hard. How can we be refined into gold without struggle?

I can't believe I am saying this. All my life I have hidden from the refiner's fire because I knew it would get hot. Now I feel like I am running straight into it! But I am amazed at how God has changed both Laurens' and my hearts in such a short time.

We were enjoying a walk to the grocery store this afternoon (there won't be any of those soon) and LK said to me, "It seems like this has all happened so fast, but really we have been thinking about this for over three weeks already." It doesn't seem like it has been fast because we usually deliberate over things FOREVER.

In hindsight, I can see the seeds for this move planted in the past two years of our lives. We have both struggled increasingly with where we are in our lives, both professionally and as a family. We both like the predictable path we currently walk in this small corner of TO. We also long for something more, but what we didn't know. God's world is so much bigger than the GTA. He gave us an itch for change that just wouldn't go away, and now he is leading us on his path which is going to lead us right through that refiner's fire.