Wow, I haven’t written here in over five months. It’s been a weird season of major change in my life. In the last two months, I:

  1. Took a chance and had my heart broken for the first time in a very long time,
  2. Moved to a new apartment after three years in the same place, and
  3. Decided to leave my job of five years.

A couple of these don’t sound very pleasant (and trust me, they weren’t), but God still used them to heal parts of me that desperately needed healing.

I’ve come to realize that comfort isn’t a very effective learning tool. It is often in the pain, the disappointment, the confusion, that I learn more about who God is, and the role that He’s written for me in His story. It is often in the storm that He calls me out of the boat, and it is then that I see His faithfulness when He makes me walk on the water towards Him. Time and time again, God has never failed to honor obedience. We need only to follow His leading.

As I approach this fork in the road, I feel nervous, excited, sorrowful, hopeful, and uncertain… much like I did when I decided to pack up and move to Dubai with nothing but a couple of suitcases. If I hadn’t taken that step of faith seven years ago, I would never have had all these amazing adventures.

My life looks nothing like I imagined it to be – it is so much better than I could have dreamed. And it has very little to do with my current circumstances – both the undeserved pleasures and the unexpected heartaches. But rather, in the last seven years, the changes He’s made in my heart are nothing short of miraculous.

As a result, my relationships with my family and friends have reached a depth I could only dream of. I’ve learned to face my demons and declare that I’ve been given the power to overcome them. I’ve learned to allow myself to feel, to cry, to lay my every weakness at the foot of the cross. I’ve learned to embrace the freedom I’ve been given. And I’ve been blessed to walk alongside many friends as they accepted and learned the same things for themselves.

I wonder what my life will look like seven years from now. I wonder where He’s going to take me next. But until then, I hold fast to my anchor, my hope, my firm foundation. He is eternal and unchanging, and I can’t wait to see what else He has in store.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:14-21)