Desperate

Our Family About to Receive our Greatest Gift in 07- Look how HUGE I was!!

Getting This Sweet Gift Made our Year!


In worship this past weekend we sang the song Breathe. The lyrics speak of being desperate for God and being lost without him. I have sang this song many times and today something just took over. You know the times in worship when it just feels like the entire sanctuary is anointed with God's presence. I know that He's always there, but I'm talking about when you can just FEEL it with every part of your heart. This was a time for me when I wanted to kneel, cry or just lift my hands to heaven in utter surrender to my King. In that moment I was desperate and somehow completely free.

Hans and I talked about the service afterward and as I shared my experience with him I began to reflect on 2007 and our desperate year. Last year was full of much difficult change for our family.

We began the year with three months under our belt in Little Rock, Arkansas. We left the only place our entire family has ever called home....Texas. We left almost all of our family and many close friends. I loved our life in Texas...our church, friends, and our kids friends. God interrupted our somewhat comfortable life with an undeniable call on both our hearts to come serve Him full time as missionary staff with Family Life.

In the beginning we were eager to pursue this call and all that God had for us in our journey, however when the rush wore off and I actually had to move the grief set in. I was afraid and lonely and if I'm honest wanted to go back home. The only thing keeping me in Little Rock was this call on my heart. I went through periods of doubt. Did Hans and I really hear God? Was it really He who called our hearts here? Would I ever like it here? Would this place ever be home for us?

I was a desperate girl who felt lost and alone I needed God so much.

Not only was I in a strange city, Hans was going to have a real job now. For the last seven years Hans had worked from home and never a forty hour work week. He was very hands on with our family and we spent alot of time together. Now I'm in Little Rock and God took my best friend to go serve Him full time. I felt more alone than ever. Let me see, I get to do what I've always done, only I move away from everyone I love, and I get to do it now without my husband? If I'm honest (I've had a few eyebrows raised at my honesty) I felt God stole my husband to go and serve Him when I needed Hans here with me.

I was a lonely, desperate girl. I needed my God.

Here comes the topper - are you ready? We're gonna have a baby in 2007!!
Lets just say this news took both of us some time to adjust to.

Lonely, desperate, and pregnant. I'm thinking God is not coming through on His promise to never give me more than I can handle. On top of all of this Hans Isn't feeling his job is a fit for him, but still we feel called, angry, frustrated, and desperate.

The year goes on and we find a church home and a small group with friends we feel connected too. God is teaching me irreplaceable truth in the midst of my pain. He is showing me things I'm certain I wouldn't have seen had I not been in my pain and so desperate. I rememember that someone much wiser than I told me when we reported to Family Life, "God is much more interested in doing something in you than through you." I felt hard pressed, persecuted, but not abandoned, lonely and desperate, but somehow more free.

On June 27th Calvin Stephen makes his entrance. He has issues with his platelet counts and they aren't sure why. After delivery I am hemorrhaging and they have to do emergency surgery to stop the bleeding. The sweet doctor who has a conviction against any permanent birth control tells us he would recommend we pray about not having more children and that in his medical opinion I shouldn't give birth to any more. Cal is in the hospital I'm having a difficult recovery and again I'm tempted to doubt. I just want my family my friends. God, I wanna go home.

Cal is a hard baby who wants to nurse less than every two hours and he wants me to hold him all the time. He never naps longer than twenty minutes at a time and I'm exhausted. Something is different though, this desperate girl has her God whom she is clinging to and she feels empowered. Empowered to let things go undone. Empowered to trust God to lead me, sometimes minute by minute.

Arkansas is beginning to feel like home, and I'm loving being a mom again in spite of my circumstances. I start longing to have my other children here instead of at school. That's right HOME SCHOOLING!!! At the end of 07 we feel certain, as certain as you can that were to bring Zac and Ryland home.

It's January of 2008 and Little Rock is a beautiful place to live. I am entering into a place in my relationship with God where I'm asking Him to show me what it's like to love Him more than I love Hans. I want to depend on Him for things I look for Hans to fill. I am seeing the health this is bringing for my own heart and into my marriage. I don't want to just to say that God is my number one, but to experience loving Him more, with the truest part of my heart.

Hans loves his new job at the ministry. He feels alive, excited, and challenged. Cal is a healthy precious baby who is teaching me beautiful things on unconditional love, rest, and being able to focus on what matters. He is my reminder that surrender is a beautiful place to be because I rarely really know what I need, but God knows, and thankfully his vote trumps mine. We have started home schooling and it is hard, but I feel so full of joy to have my children here and to get to be with them.

There are still many hardships that I know we will face in 08 and I know enough to know that following God is anything but easy. I also know the most precious valuable lessons in my life were through painful, hard circumstances. God is teaching me to find him in the midst of the chaos, pain, and confusion, and to be controlled by him and not my circumstances. I suppose this is what God is talking about in the book of James when he tells me to give thanks for my trials because trials test my faith and this develops perseverance. He tells me perserverance must finish its work so that I may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.

I confess that I don't like trials much, but I do long to be complete, and to be without lack...what's that? Sometimes I tell Hans and I am tempted to believe that I just want a comfortable easy life. Money, health, family, friends and good times. If there is one thing I know about myself I know that a comfortable life does not bring desperation for me. If I'm to be transformed I must be desperate.

I am learning that transformation will not happen because of my good deeds or intentions. Not that my good deeds aren't powerful, but they could never replace the power that lies within my relationship with my God. I am transformed when I cling to the one who changes things. Change may not happen in my circumstances, but something very powerful happens to my heart and this is freedom.

Oh Daddy God in 2008 please keep this heart desperate for you, because the truth is I am absolutely lost without you.