Taking a hiatus (officially)

God is good… All the time!

I haven’t posted much on this blog, mostly because I have two others that I do post to (you can see my writing blog here, and the blog for my nonprofit here). I don’t think I’m going to delete the blog, because I may want to revisit it when life is a bit less hectic, or when I have wedding pictures, or something else fun. But without “making an end” or some kind of announcement or something, this blog feels like a loose end. So I’m going to officially take a hiatus, and cross this blog off my to-do list for awhile. Hasta la vista! And thanks for visiting.

 

Life is never boring

I used to pray, every year on New Year’s Eve, for a boring year. I finally quit, because the prayer was never answered. A friend told me I’d be bored in a month, but I still would love to give it a try sometime! (Even a month of “boring” would be a nice change…)

This year is shaping up to be huge in terms of transitions and new things. In addition to my new “job” as a writer and publisher, and my old jobs with Ten Eighteen and the Wright Group, this is just what’s happening in the next few months (this list is mid-April through September!).

• The academic portion of our homeschooling will be done, although Zeke will be doing a gap year of life experience and our school will not technically close until 2014.
• Ryan will be graduating from college in May, and marrying in June.
• I’ll be taking our first official team trip to Andros in August.
• I may be taking an earlier trip for legal paperwork and research.
• Zeke will be headed to Uganda in August for about 6 weeks, and I’ll follow him in September for a work trip so we can journey home together.
• Books 2 and 3 of the IXEOS Trilogy will be published.
• BUT GOD: Two Words to Freedom will be published.
• We will (Lord willing) sell our house and move to a new, temporary house in Raleigh.

In addition to that, I will (theoretically) be writing and editing, going to Beaufort, and enjoying at least some time with my family. It seems crazy, and yet, really, I’m so excited about most of it that I literally have butterflies sometimes.

I have probably written before on this blog about being a “kingdom” Christian. My upcoming book is all about that journey (shameless self promotion). What it means, in a nutshell, is that my goal — my family’s goal — is to advance God’s kingdom first and foremost. (A great book on this concept is called Wild Goose Chase, by Mark Batterson. Formerly titled Chase the Goose: Reclaiming the Adventure of Living a Spirit-Led Life and published by Lifeway as a Bible study book.) I look at life like it is in The Lord of the Rings. We all have a destiny and a role to play in advancing the Kingdom of God, and it will cost everything to fulfill it. Honestly, I really do… I believe that with all my heart.

While you might be nodding your head saying, “Of course! That’s what Christians do!”,  it really isn’t. This isn’t a disparagement of anyone or any church, it’s merely stating a fact. If we, as Christians, really were living this way, there would be a lot more miracles, a lot more missions, a lot more love, and a lot less suffering the world over. Churches tend to be (with exceptions) church oriented. Pastors (with exceptions, including my own) tend to be church oriented. That’s okay as far as it goes, but the Kingdom is out there, out past the church, out past home group, out past you and your life. The Kingdom is at war, and will be at war until Jesus comes back. No lie. It’s in the Bible.

Which means, as the old song says, “I’m a soldier in the Lord’s army.” My part may be big or small in natural terms, but to God, to the Kingdom and to His plans, it’s huge. It’s something only I can do. It’s something I have to both choose to acknowledge as a concept, accept as a message, follow as truth, and give my all to accomplishing. Sometimes — a lot of times — things don’t turn out as we think they will. Obedience is as big a part of the walk as anything else. I’ve had things fail in natural terms that I still know, 100%, were from God. My part was to obey what I heard Him say, and do my best with it. That’s all.

What that translates to in these next 5 months or so is this. The opportunity to go to Andros was unmistakably a God thing, brought about through a chain of events that no one could have foreseen or coordinated. We went, and God showed me some things to do there as a Phase I: the youth camp missions trip, starting a Bahamian NGO/nonprofit, and finding out about egg farming. I came home and, after the house stuff was done, started on all those things. In the midst of that, the hospice began to move from (I thought) Phase II or even III to Phase I. My motto is always, “Do the thing in front of you,” so when things shift, I don’t stick to my own agenda and to-do list, I shift with them. I hadn’t planned on going back to Andros until August, what with the graduations and wedding, but now, after 10 days of trying to get a lawyer to call me back, and with information needed that will obviously be more easily obtained in person than on the phone, I am about 85% sure I’ll be headed back down before then. Maybe even a lot before then.

Do the thing in front of you… That’s how you start. My upcoming book, BUT GOD: Two Words to Freedom, is about this type of living, and if you’re interested, I encourage you to get it. (I’m hoping it’ll be available next week, and I’ll post an announcement when it is released.)  It’s a scarier kind of living than you might be used to. People will likely claim you are crazy (or lucky). But you’re not either one. When God speaks to you, when the Wild Goose that is the Holy Spirit (Celtic Christians called the Holy Spirit an gaedh-glas, which means “the wild goose”) whispers a crazy idea in your head, you have to choose: go, or don’t.

This is why I’ll never have a boring year. Wild geese aren’t boring. A Kingdom at war isn’t boring. Fulfilling a destiny, a quest, isn’t boring. No matter what you’re called to do for the Kingdom, if you will give your all to Him, you will find adventure, fulfillment, and a closeness and dependence with God that you’ve never experienced. Plus, you’ll be tired a lot of the time, so you’ll sleep pretty well, too!

Managing my Freak-Out

Given all I have to do, sitting here writing a blog post seems stupid. But writing calms me, and I need to spend at least a couple of hours editing this morning, so I’m writing to try to reach my happy place. Right now, that’s a stretch, but if I can reach my “not running away screaming” place, I’ll have accomplished something!

We just got back from 5 nights in the Bahamas. Not a vacation, so I’m not feeling that wonderful relaxed feeling you get from days on a beach with a few frozen adult beverages to cool you off. We did spend 2 nights in Nassau, but at the first hotel there were two HUGE groups of spring breakers, and at the second hotel, a HUGE group of Orthodox Jews with their families. The latter was not much more unruly than the first, sadly – at least their kids. And the adults are rude. I kept thinking, “You’re representing GOD here! You are all wearing yarmulkes and carrying around your Torah and keeping kosher, and then ruining your witness of Yahweh by your behavior!” It was sad. And not relaxing. We did accomplish what we needed to in Andros, which is a story for another blog.

So now I’m home. I made a to-do list, just for the house stuff, on the plane, and it was more than 1 page. I have 8 days to get this house ready to go on the market, and I’m really panicked about it. We’re having a moving sale Saturday, too. I hate yard sales – you say it starts at 8am, and people show up at 6am when you haven’t even had your coffee. They haggle over a dollar. You have to get it all spread out, try to price things… It’s just a pain. Usually I donate everything to Goodwill instead, but we have SO much stuff that this seemed like a better idea. At the time. Right now it seems like a terrible idea, but I have an ad in the paper, so we’ll be doing it.

The house. Is a wreck. Despite all the work I’ve already done, it’s still a long way from ready. We still have some work being done. We’re still trying to live life. We still have a dog who sheds black hair everywhere, and a cat who leaves half her coat behind when she gets off of a chair. I now know the reason we’ve never lived in a house we were trying to sell. It’s impossible!!!

Okay, I feel better now. Sort of. Thanks for your patience. You can go back to your previously scheduled program.