Not by power or by might

 “I've hit a wall...planning to take my whole family to foreign countries for 6 months on 1 month's notice has gotten the best of me and I'm officially burned out.”

That was the beginning of a blog post from about a week ago. I was running around like a crazy lady planning fundraisers, getting travel vaccinations done, visiting friends that one last time, calling cell phone providers, dropping kids off at preschool, and on top of that trying to keep my house somewhat in order and putting some sort of food on the table each day. I felt completely done and in all of this chaos realized I had spent barely any time in prayer or in the scriptures.

Then one day I put the kids down for a nap and decided that I needed to leave the mess alone and take the time to seek God. I decided to start playing and singing some worship songs at the piano. The song that came to my mind was “The Joy of the Lord” by Twila Paris. As I began to sing and play I also started to complain to God. “Lord, I don't have joy, I only have burdens! We only have a few weeks to go and only $5000 in our bank account. I am going to look like a complete fool when this doesn't come together and we have to come back to Canada early with our tails between our legs.” And then it all started to come out...

“God this is too HARD! I don't like feeling out of control.” And then it hit me that this is exactly what we had been praying for. We had been praying that God would take us to the place where we had to rely on his grace and mercy, not on our own ability to do life as we see fit.

I took a little break from playing the piano because Jonah, our 5 month old had woken up. I sat with him on the couch and he started smiling up at me. We had what seemed like several minutes of just staring into each others eyes and smiling at each other. The thought hit me- Jonah knows nothing more than that I am his mother and I will always care for his needs. He has complete trust in me and doesn't even know what it means to be self-reliant. Of course I knew that God was speaking to me in this moment and telling me that his love for me is even more complete than my love for Jonah. Just as Jonah knows nothing other than trust in his mother to meet his needs, so I need to have child-like faith in God to provide for mine. God was saying in that moment, “Just trust me daughter. Know that I love you and care for you and that you actually don't have to have it all figured out. Your faith pleases me and you don't have to be perfect for me to take care of your needs.”

I went back to the song “The Joy of the Lord” at the piano. Luckily Jonah loves music and was happy to jump in the jolly jumper for a long time while I played and worshiped God. One of the lines in the song says “The joy of the lord will be my strength. I will not waiver walking by faith. I am surrounded by mercy and grace.” I felt such a burden lifted from me in that moment. I realized that I had been believing a lie that I had to get this all together and make this all happen in order to please God and that He was just watching in some far-off corner to see if I could do it or not.

He spoke to me so clearly that this is all about faith in HIM, not in myself.

      This is about becoming like a child who just trusts in her

      heavenly father to take care of all the details. 

           This is about knowing that “if God is for me, who can be                        against me,”

                 And trusting that I am surrounded by mercy and grace.

And here we are a week later, just 9 days until we leave for the greatest adventure of our lives. So many details have come together in miraculous ways. From finding our dear nanny Katie, to having awesome friends rent our place while we're gone, to selling our second vehicle and so much more.

Jody and I just finished adding up all of the money from our fundraiser plus all of the extra money that we had from our own income and other donations and we are absolutely astounded at the generosity of our brothers and sisters and the amazing faithfulness of God. In just one month God has brought $22,500 in to send our little family out to be a light unto the nations. We estimate we need around $30,000 Canadian in total by the end of our first 3 months and I have no doubt that God is going to bring the rest of that together as well. If you have been a part of making this all come together we want to say a huge thank you. And if you have been praying for us, we want to say an even bigger thank you, because it's,

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.” -Zechariah 4:6