If God were to tell us....

If God were to tell us that we would get pregnant with Elias (!!!) the week we moved to Finland (!!!), two things we had been praying for for over a year...

and that those very answered prayers would not save us from the heartache that my heart carried...

If he would have told us that my heart and mind would taste the darkest season I've yet to experience...

That our marriage would struggle in deeper, more excruciating ways than we could ever anticipated...

If He would have told me that I would question every angle of this move, other than his Hand on it...

That my relatively-stable identity in Him would be under rapid fire for the better part of a year and a half...

that my parenting would be seasoned with major weeks-months-of near-constant doubt and heartache...

If God would have told us that he had prepared some of the sweetest relationships we have ever tasted here...

that our marriage would grow up more tender, more steady than in any season past...

that shame, regret, and fear of future would be beaten down and in many ways entirely killed...

that freedom and giddy excitement would lace its way into our dreams and days...

If God would have told us all that would be in store for us in this season of living here,

I'm not sure how I'd respond...

It's all a bit much.

But if He then could  show me who we are on this side of it all. Who Ben is as a husband and father and Christ-Follower, who I am in Christ, who our children will get to grow to be. How our family functions on this side of the last year and a half...

If I got to taste the peace that comes when the ship I locked myself in actually fares through the storm. That my anchor proves, yet again, strong enough for the waves.

If you could let me see with my eyes the sweet faces of 'my people.'

If I got the chance to rest in the deep calm of being known deeper and being moved toward in all of the mess... 

If you'd let me get a glimpse, a taste, a sense of all that?

Then you'd have one woman, convinced of her Jesus, and oh-so-willing to go wherever he sends her.

He's worth the adventure. Following him is, in every angle, an adventure.

He's not afraid to break my heart, but he's also quite able of mending.

He's not too careful as to keep me comfortable, but he knows how to keep me from crumbling.

He certainly is unwilling to keep me living as if things that were broken, were actually just fine. He never ceases in doing his good, though sometimes painful, work.

But oh how tender of a God he is. How kind of a Father. Oh how unrelenting of a love.

Oh how kind to take all my brokenness, shame, and failure and turn it into reasons to praise.

How can all of that even be possible?

But it is. He is so worthy of praise. 

And so, I'll keep opening up the rooms of this life to Him, and handing Him back my time, my heart, and the pen to this story.

May this story have the One writing it shining out on every page.