My Way or His Way

We are currently visiting with our best friends in North Carolina.  My kids are having a blast hanging out with their kids and it’s really nice to be away.  I’ve been looking forward to this trip for the last 8 months for two reasons.  The first reason was an obvious chance to see my best friend who has been living across the country in Colorado for the last 5 years and was planning a move back to the East Coast.   The second reason was a chance to fuel my deep-seated desire to move our own family down to this area.  You see for the last year and a half up until very recently I was on a mission to get our family out of the city. 

Here were my reasons why:  We live in a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment with three kids.  That’s just crazy.  We have no parking spot.  We have to do laundry in a communal laundry in our basement.  When you have 3 kids that means doing laundry down there at least 3 times a week.  We have no outdoor space and I was sick of schlepping our kids to the playground every day.  I wanted a yard.  I wanted a long driveway so our kids could ride their bikes on it.  Also, the schools in our city are all over the place in terms of quality and I wanted to move our kids to better, more consistently good schools.  The list went on but those were the generally big reasons why I wanted out.

I begged and pleaded with R to consider it.  I created online real estate accounts and saved my favorite houses that were all at least triple the size of our current apartment and cost even less than what we could sell our place for.  I prayed about it, sort of.  I mostly kept telling God that He knew what I wanted and needed and that was it.  I looked up job opportunities for R, planned a budget for how we could live off one income, and generally just dreamed about my life outside of the city. 

Then about two months ago God began to deal with me on many, many levels.  This desire of mine was one of them.  For the most part my desire to get out was eating me up.  It’s all I thought about and wanted to talk about.  It was nearly the sole source of conflict between my husband and I.  At some point I prayed to God that He would either make this move happen or tame the desire my heart had for it.  He ended up doing the latter. 

What God showed me recently was that I could have my way or His.  It was my choice.  But the blessing was going to come from following Him, even if it wasn’t where I thought I wanted to be.  For now following Him means staying put, exactly where we are.  As I have relinquished that to Him, I have had total peace, which had been missing from me for as long as I had been pursuing a relocation.  I’ve also been able to look at the space we have with a new appreciation.  Most people in the world live in much smaller spaces with many more people.  My complaints, while valid to many, were actually showing how spoiled I had become. 

Today I was reading in 1 Samuel about Saul and David.  Both were chosen by God to be kings over Israel.  The difference between the two of them is that at one point Saul chose not to do what God had asked him to.  Because of this God was no longer with him and he lived a life tortured by jealousy and evil spirits.  In contrast, David always followed the path God had for Him and God stayed by David’s side, blessing him and keeping him safe despite many dangerous encounters.  I am choosing to follow God.  I don’t want to go my own way. 

So here I am, sitting in a beautiful house.  If I had come here 8 months ago I would have been very jealous visiting here with no plans of getting a house like this for myself.  Instead I am able to enjoy my time with friends wholeheartedly without longing for something that may or may not ever be mine.