Learning, growing and changing

I have been MIA on this blog over the last few months. I have had much to share and say but felt that I needed to process things a little bit before I posted again.

We have been here over 6 months now and I would say it is beginning to feel very much like home. We are beginning to find our feet and find our purpose, and that is a great feeling. I feel like our girls are beginning to really settle and Priya is making friends and she seems to be in a better place emotionally.

Ashish and I are also doing well. We are loving the Corps and community we have been appointed to and are feeling very positive about the future.

 I cannot speak for Ashish but these last few months have been a challenge and have stretched me a lot.

If I was to be honest, there has been some really rough days in the last six months, and there have been some hurt feelings and sometimes a fear we had made the wrong decision in offering our family up for overseas service.

I feel like I am on the other side of that hurt and fear now and so I can look at things a little bit more objectively. I can actually now see that God has been answering our prayers all along, sometimes prayers I had forgotten I had prayed.

Like I said things have not always been easy and there have been tears and there have been feelings hurt in the process but I now see God was with us all along.

I see that God truly paid attention to the reasons we wanted to move our family overseas. He heard us when we said we wanted to be challenged and stretched, we wanted to be made to feel uncomfortable and we wanted to grow deeper in our walk with him. He heard us say we wanted to be immersed in other cultures.

No we are not living in a third world country and we are not struggling and living rough like many other officers, we are not in danger and we are not living without adequate shelter. The reality is we have it made,  but at times things are a little difficult and at times things are frustrating and things don't come easy. There is more work involved in day to day tasks that were very simple in the USA. Lets just be honest and acknowledge that USA officers are some of the most blessed in
 the world and you can get use to being a little spoiled. When you don't live in that world any more, that is an adjustment.

Oh but I thank God for that adjustment. I don't want to become so accustomed to a certain way of life that I become miserable when I don't have it anymore. I want to be changed in that process and I want to be made to feel uncomfortable so that I have to ask God to forgive me for me selfishness.

He has answered my prayers, he has been teaching me to distinguish between what is an inconvenience  or what is a little  frustrating to what is actually life threatening or damaging. He is teaching me to be grateful and thankful. I thank God for those lessons

When I have been hurt by miscommunication or my false expectations he has taught me to think through how I respond to be people and to let go of my expectations and to look at it from the other side.

He is teaching me daily and for that I am incredibly blessed.

He is teaching me that he knows me better than I know myself and that he does indeed give good gifts to his children.

I have never been more anxious about my children and about my future than I have since being here and yet he is teaching me to really trust in him, not just say I trust him but to really trust him.

He is teaching me how to be a pastor and not just an administrator and how to learn from my past mistakes and how to love on people and let go  of my dreams and visions.

He is teaching me that "things" are not important and actually just crowd your house.

He is teaching me to say no to things that I don't think I should be spending my time on.

I still get a lot of things wrongs and in the beginning my hurt over some things my have made me withdraw a little but I see God has been with me this whole time and he has just been waiting for me to be ready to learn the lessons he wanted to teach  me.

I am in a good place right now and ready for the next lessons he has for me to learn.

I share these things because I think it is important to be real and because I think people need to know that saying yes to God is not always easy, but it doesn't mean you made a mistake. It means that Gid actually heard your prayers and is answering them right before your very eyes.