four novembers have come and gone since all of life seemed to be falling in on us…
four whole years since we picked up all the pieces of our life-tangible and packed it into boxes…
since the desperate longing…the wanting so badly for it to be just that simple to pick up all the pieces of our life-intangible…
but it wasn’t…and we couldn’t…so we left…
left idaho to come back here…to come back “home”…
only, we hadn’t any home here…
no work here…
absolutely no idea what life would look like here…
and the future seemed all swallowed up in a dense, frosty fog…
and my heart felt just as bankrupt as that judge declared us to be.
and then…amidst that packing up time…a note arrived for me…
“…seems like this season may be a bitter cold wintry time in life…hard, long and full of leafless trees – seemingly no harvest or sunshine. but you, my dear friend, will be the sunshine for your family, you will smile and rejoice your way through whatever you are standing in the middle of. you will be a shining example to everyone of how God can take a seemingly painful, embarrassing, and terrible thing and make it a beautiful story of God’s faithful provision and His song in the middle of the dark times.”
i’m not so sure i’ve been as faithful as my sweet friend thought me to be…
i’m not so sure i’ve been that sunshine for them…that i’ve smiled and rejoiced my way these four years through…
but i am certain that He has been everything she said He would be…
certain that He has been faithful…
certain that this sometimes painful, sometimes dark, sometimes bitter cold season has been a very important, very necessary part of this incredibly beautiful story He’s written for us…that He knows the end of our story…that He will be faithful to walk with us all the way through!
so although…these four novembers later…some patches of fog still persist…
my heart is ever-more hopeful…
for i am ever-more certain…expectant…
that in His always perfect timing…winter times are always followed by springs…
– images from that november in 2008
