domingo, 26 de mayo de 2013

Oh How God Changes Our Plans...

Wow.  It has literally been 13 months since I remembered I had a blog.  Thankfully I remembered the password and can utilize it once more.  Will I keep up with it? Who knows.  Perhaps if I have more nights when I can't sleep and have nothing better to do.

So, this blog was intended to record my many adventures and thoughts about my time in Puerto Rico.  This time last week I believed that my life on the island was about finished.  All year I've been planning to leave and I've been working hard applying for jobs in Kentucky.  God seems to have other plans for me.  It had been weighing heavily on my heart to reconsider returning here for one more year.  I could have waited faithfully all summer for an answer from God and still pursued a career at home, or I could save myself the misery and discuss the possibility of remaining here with my family before summer even begins and make a decision and go with it.  There are a handful of reasons why I feel like I need to return, however once I have made that decision God has made it clear that this is where I need to be.

It has been a difficult year to say the least.  It has included personal pain and heartache (you know, the girly kind that I embarrassingly worked through), followed by many spiritual attacks on so many of my loved ones here.  Oh and I started grad school and had a very busy working life this year to top it off.  What can I say?  When good things are happening the enemy will attack.  That would be a summary of this last year here in Puerto Rico.  But when the enemy attacks he really is only fighting against God.  We all know how that ends up.  What doesn't kill us makes us stronger as individuals and even stronger as group of believes who are in this together.  I have never had stronger relationships and support outside of my own blood family.  So even though it is killing me to spend another year away from my actual family, I just feel that my Puerto Rican family is not one I should walk away from just yet.

In a little over a week I will be home in Cincinnati for the summer. I'm stoked and can't wait to be with my parents, siblings and nephews.  This summer will be a summer to enjoy them, and also of prayer.  I will be praying that God makes my ministry for this next year clear to me, so I can choose a direction in Puerto Rico that will be fruitful to him.

One thing that does come to mind before I go to bed... it has been clear for two years in a row (but for two different reasons) God has wanted me to remember the same promise from Exodus 14:14:  The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still.