If you love Jesus, you have to move to Africa

My husband and I recently announced that at the end of the school year, our family will be moving from Peoria, IL to Dallas, TX. The way that this job all came about was seriously incredible. The entire process I felt the Lord's provision and peace. I wanted to share our story, how this all came to place, and my thoughts on the possibility of moving these last few months.

Let me first start out by saying that from the beginning I didn't think it was going to actually happen. We first got a call about this job at the end of September. My youth pastor, who is now a pastor at the church we will be heading to, called me and asked if I thought Joe would be interested in being a campus pastor. I sat on the other end of the line just shocked. I said, "I have no idea. Maybe?" And that's how it started. I remember thinking throughout that whole phone call (which lasted about 4 minutes) how amazing it would be if it all worked out but inside I had all these doubts and reasons why it wouldn't. 

My whole life I've been going to church, which I'm incredibly grateful for. I've been to a lot of camps and retreats, listened to many sermons, and heard countless testimonies about how God provided for people with opportunity when they least expected it. 

Ever since we moved to Peoria, it was never really our intent to stay here forever. We knew that at some point we wanted to be further south. The problem was my husband has a unique job that many schools don't have much turnover in. So the chance of us moving for a job similar to one that he already has was very slim. 

In May, he graduated from Southern Evangelical Seminary with his doctorate of ministry in apologetics. Sounds so smart, right?? He's basically a genius. But as he was coming to an end of that program, we began wondering, "What's next?" Where can we go and what can we do that would continue furthering the kingdom and give Joe the most opportunity to be effective? But that's kind of where it stopped. We didn't give it much more thought because our second daughter was born at the end of May, so we knew that for at least a year we wouldn't be going anywhere. And we were really at peace with that. 

I will be honest here. Judge me if you must. Up until the end of 2014, I was looking online EVERYDAY for a job for Joe. Schools, churches, restaurant manager, I didn't care! I was so ready to be closer to my family, and I was putting in incredible efforts to make that happen but to no avail. 

About a year ago, I gave that up. Not in frustration or anything like that. I just wanted to embrace my time here. Yes, I wanted to be close to my family, but God had placed us here and I knew that I needed to be present. 

I can honestly say that 2015 was the most comfortable year for me in Illinois. I found my niche. I have good friends, a good church, I know how to be a mom here. Everything was really falling into place for us in the midwest. 

And then that phone call came at the end of September, and rocked my world. 

During that time, I was reading a book called When I Lay My Isaac Down by Carol Kent. Amazing book, incredible challenge. I highly recommend it to you. But the whole gist is to let go of the things that mean the most to you. Not letting go, like you don't care about them anymore. But letting go and giving God full control of the outcome. 

I prayed for weeks that God would allow me and help me to let go of this entire situation, and He did. He was so faithful to guard my heart and my thoughts throughout those months of waiting. I only told a couple of people here about the job, and sometimes they would ask, "How are you feeling about the possibility of moving? What are you thinking?" And I remember saying back to them, "It's literally too close to my dream for me to think about it right now." I knew that if I thought about where we would live, what our lives would look like, how close we would be to my family, that I would totally not be giving Joe a fair chance to decide if this was an opportunity that he wanted to pursue. 

So I didn't think about it, which that made watching the whole process play out even more fun.

Like I said in the beginning, from the get-go I did not think this was going to happen. I thought there would be some kind of kink that would throw the whole thing off and we'd be staying in Peoria. I had totally come to terms with this and was honestly ok with it. 

I felt like I didn't deserve it. I didn't think that God was going to give me my dream. 

Did you people have Mission Friends at your church on Wednesday nights? We did. Bless. I remember hearing so many stories about people who were born and raised in the US and then moved all over the world to be a missionary for Jesus. And on so many occasions, whoever was teaching our class would look at us and say, "And this could be you one day! You could be living in Africa serving Jesus!"

And from then for a very long time, I thought that if you loved Jesus, He was going to make you move to Africa. Even if it was something you had no desire to do.

Now as I've gotten older, obviously I realized that isn't fully true. But there is still a part of me that kind of believes it. That I'm never going to be fully happy. There's always going to be some kind of major crutch in my life. 

Do you struggle with this? Why do we think this way? 

Why don't we believe that God sees our dreams and believes in our dreams? 

I have never felt the Lord's provision more than I have in these last couple of months. We pushed no doors open in order to make this happen. The whole process went so smoothly. 

We are ready as a family for a new challenge and a new adventure. 

Thank you Jesus for hearing my dream and for making it real! Thank you for seeing the desires of my heart and blessing me with them. You are so good to us.

I hope this post encourages you that your dreams (whether big or small) are not unnoticed in Jesus' eyes. Keep dreaming. Stay faithful where you are at and trust that bigger things are heading your way!

Here is a pic of little Lola and Harper during our last visit to Texas. They are wearing matching outfits and I had much higher expectations for this picture. Maybe one day they will actually be smiling and looking at the camera at the same time!