Moving to Africa and leaving my kids,
Matt and Karen, hurt more than anything I’d ever experienced.
Everything
within me cried out that my children still needed their parents. I recognized
they didn’t need us the way they did when they were little, but I believed they
needed our behind-the-scenes support to transition out of the world of college
and into the world of professionals.
However,
my husband, Dave, didn’t understand my thinking. He pointed out that by the
time we’d leave, Matt and Karen would have graduated from college, and that Matt
didn’t need us because he had already married Jill.
Yes,
Matt and Jill had each other, their own support system, but Karen was alone,
and by the time we’d leave for Africa, she’d be only weeks out of college and transitioning
into her professional career. It would be a crucial time in her life. My heart
cried out: “We need to help her settle into a new job in a different town and a
different state!”
I also knew that if joining Wycliffe was not God’s plan for us, He had power
enough to prevent it. I gave Him every opportunity to show us green lights and
send us to Africa or red lights and keep us home. In the meantime, I kept taking
the next step, and the next, all the while watching for God’s answer.
He
gave us only green lights. He gave us only open doors.
I
had my answer.
I
could almost hear God whisper, “Now, about your children—don’t you know I love
them even more than you do? You can trust Me with them.”
Knowing
God’s answer didn’t take away the pain, but my heart melted when He asked me to
believe He loved Matt and Karen even more than I loved them.
I
could do only two things: trust Him to manage their consequences because of our
move to Africa, and then turn and take an extreme, and blind, leap of faith.
"Christ wants not nibblers of
the possible,” wrote C.T. Studd, “but grabbers of the impossible."
God was asking me to be a grabber
of what seemed utterly impossible.
Unthinkable.
And so it was that on July 3, 1993, we moved out of our home of fourteen
years. We could call no other place “home” as much as that one. Karen and I
shed tears when we pulled the door closed for the last time on our empty house.
Dave
and I were on our way to Nairobi, Kenya.
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