In the still quiet morning when everything is all but dead, it’s easy to miss the growth happening underneath that builds a foundation!
I’m not sure anyone is ever super excited about the growth that happens inside each of us. When I was younger I had really bad growing pains. They were kind of traumatic! I would wake up in the middle of the night in so much pain, I went to the doctor and found that I was growing so quickly the tendons in my knees couldn’t keep up. It hurt so much, and caused me to miss out on certain things that I wanted to do, like try out for sports. Looking back, that was probably a good thing because I am so clumsy I definitely would have gotten myself, or someone on my team, seriously hurt!
This quote sums my life up perfectly!
“I’m not clumsy, it’s just the floor hates me, the table and chairs are bullies and the walls get in the way“
The pains I felt were not the way I would have asked to experience growth. I could have gone with becoming 5′ 11″ without any pains at all. That however is not how it worked out.
This last year we have experienced the same thing with God. The growing pains have been enormous, yet they have produced something incredible. I wouldn’t go back and change it for anything.
Almost 2 years ago God gave us a yearning for Denver, CO. We sold our house, and packed up our life to follow in the step God laid in front of us. Every part of me was ready to start our life in Denver and to be there making moves for God for the rest of our lives… that didn’t happen. We learned quiet quickly that God isn’t going to show us the whole story, because then we would take our own route to get to the ending. God wants to teach us so much in the process that he will only show us one step at a time. So if you’re waiting for the end product to be revealed before you take that first step of faith you may be waiting a VERY long time.
We moved 2 times in the year and a half we lived there. I now officially strongly dislike moving. If I have to do it again any time soon I may just set all of my furniture and belongings on fire so I don’t have to pack again.I moved twice while pregnant as a surrogate. If you want to hear all about that journey stay tuned because it’s an amazing one!
The church we went to was a church plant and struggling. People were leaving one after another.Even though the pastor was amazing at speaking the word of God. It felt personal when people left at first and was so hard to stay focused on the dream God gave us. We wanted so badly to be there for them to help their dream succeed that we allowed the circumstances around us to distract us from what God called us for.
Work was one of the biggest struggles of all. My husband is a working man. He isn’t built to be a stay at home dad, it stresses him out when he is not able to provide when we need it. Boy oh boy did we need it. We moved there with a business and the plan all laid out for success. The plan did not play out the way we thought it would. We had family issues that stemmed from the business and spread through my side of the family like wild-fire. So much drama and frustration was jam-packed into this time that it seemed so overwhelming!
I am social bug, so being around people just fills me up. I love hanging out, talking, and doing life with people. While we were here I had very few people that we hung out and did life with. So the ones I did have I clung to!
Spiritually we had a hard time because we spent so much time pouring out and we didn’t have anywhere to go just to sit in the presence and enjoy being filled up so we could pour out. Being so focused on someone elses dream is not the way to be filled. We did life for people while trying to cling to God and learned through some very strong growing pains, that this is not the way to thrive! we were stuck in survival mode. barely making it through the days and clinging to God asking what the heck was going on.
With work being so hard for my husband and the surrogacy coming to an end, we knew we needed to figure something out. When work popped up in Las Vegas we jumped on it and tried to tailor the dream to work in Vegas. Guess what, it would work there! God even revealed the next step of the dream once we decided to move. So of course we moved.
Once in Las Vegas it was a whirlwind of sickness. The sickness NEVER left us as long as we stayed in the rental we had. all four of us were sick for 2 months straight with headaches, strep, uti, yeast infections, nose bleeds, sinus issues, and allergies. we weren’t sleeping well and little aspen was having nightmares. When Sean left the house for an extended period of time and started feeling better he got really happy. Then within 8 hours of being back in the house he got sick again. So we started to look at moving again. We went to stay with my parents for a few weeks so we didn’t have to stay in the house. It was a whirlwind of craziness.
God opened so many doors and so many blessings for us back in Pa that it was like a giant flashing neon sign for us to come home. Since we have been home we have been surrounded by so much love, and blessings that after everything we’ve been through it has been almost overwhelming.
Through everything, thinking about what we’ve learned and why we learned I have realized one HUGE truth. Even when it looked like there was nothing going the way we planned and it felt like we were surrounded by emptiness and struggle, there was this growth happening in us that even I couldn’t see until recently. Looking at what we learned about ourselves and each other is amazing. We learned about being truly frugal. We know what it means to really delight yourself in the Lord, because we had nothing else to really delight in so we surrounded our self with God. These are all things that we know without a doubt are a necessity for our foundation. God has given us a dream that needs a solid foundation to thrive! We learned what type of leaders we need to be to help others grow and dream for themselves. This was a time of foundation growth for us, and it was needed immensely!
Now I get to sit out on my back porch and look at amazing views that give me a little insight into the heart of God.
With the quiet and the cold you can clearly see that everything is just about dead. It’s not thriving and producing, but there is nothing “STILL” about what is happening inside every single tree out there. There is a growth that is churning beneath the surface that in just a few weeks, if not less, is going to start popping up.
I encourage you today with my story of craziness. Just because you feel like nothing is going right, or everything is so difficult, that does not mean that God isn’t blessing you. This period was such a blessing to us because I now know that in all things God is growing, stretching and pruning me to make a difference. To spread the news of who he is and what it means to:
Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desired of your heart
Psalm 37:4
Distortion Free Radio 