Personal Reflections

This past year set the record for me surrendering — this might be the only year I’ve ever succeeded at sticking with a New Year’s “resolution”, haha! And I’m not talking about the surrendering that happened as a result of Covid or politics — that’s a whole separate thing that I wrote about here.

What I’m talking about is more of changes within our family and my personal life. So fun fact, I’m an enneagram 9 and an S on DISC personality test. Do you know what that means? I like routine. I like plans. I like for things to go how I plan. I like security, stability, peace, and predictability. I hate unexpected change. Hate hate hate. But I am working on being more flexible and I really think setting the intention of surrendering at the start of the year helped me to deal with change in a much healthier way: relying on God and trusting that he is faithful.

This year, we brought our second son into the world in May. While having a baby in a pandemic was definitely different, the largest area of surrendering revolved around my time. Now that we have two boys under the age of 3, I’m obviously more busy taking care of them! Because of that, I decided to finally close down my ceramics business [you can read all about that decision here.]— which was really hardly alive anyway — and just focus on the boys and taking care of our home, and making time to take care of myself.

Paul and I also took a lot of big steps in following God and where we believe He is calling us. We are moving to Marion as soon as we’re able to actually inhabit our house. Currently, Theo kindly calls it “dirty” but really it’s way more than dirty. It’s totally gutted and we’re finally done with demoing. It only took 120 demo days. Hopefully, we’ll be actually moving into our house sometime this Spring.

Marion is not a place I ever wanted to live — I literally told Paul when we first started talking about living outside of Delaware that I would go just about anywhere in central Ohio except for Marion. Sorry not sorry (But PS, everyone we have met in Marion have been wonderful. Don’t judge a book by its cover — or horrible statistics). 

But, here we are. I think the hardest part with that decision was surrendering my expectations of what I thought our life would be. When we started going to Lifepoint in Delaware, we made some of our closest friends, friends who became family. We all have babies around the same ages and I really thought they were the people we would be raising our kids with. I pictured our kids would growing up going to school together, playing on the same sports teams, that we would do our whole life here — in Delaware, with these people. I have cried a lot — like so so much. lol I have seriously mourned the loss of those plans. This move is hard for me. And there is a place for sorrow, mourning, and crying out to God — we see it all over the Psalms and I find so much comfort in that.

At the same time, it is so unbelievably clear this is where we are supposed to go. And God calls us to leave behind comfort, to die to self to progress His kingdom, for His glory. So, surrendering I am because He is worth it. And while it is so unbelievably challenging, there is such an overwhelming feeling of peace, joy, and dare I say comfort? that comes along with following God where he calls. I believe that what God has for us, will be better than what I had planned — even if not in this lifetime, certainly in heaven. I am really excited to see what He has for us in Marion! Even when we are in difficult seasons that challenge us, we can find hope in God and we can Praise Him. He is good. He is faithful!

So today, I want to share two songs that I have found so much comfort listening to when I am struggling with change — especially with change that feels completely out of my control.

Giants by Silverberg + Ruelle is sort of the pump up song you need to just keep going — reminding you that you have the Holy Spirit inside of you to face whatever challenge or obstacle is in front of you. 

Promises by Maverick City Music is just a wonderful reminder of Gods faithfulness.