The Confessions of a Reluctant Church Planter's Wife

Part One: The Beginning of New

I've often wondered how Sarah felt when God called Abraham to follow him and leave everything. At first, God gave them no direction except to follow him. Did she go with excitement and exuberance? Or did she think it was the craziest idea she'd ever heard? Did she mourn the family and friends she left behind? Or was she shaking their dust off her sandal-straps? Was she a little reluctant in her heart even if she never verbalized it? Or a lot reluctant? I don't know the answer to my questions because scripture doesn't say, but what I do know is she went wherever, whenever, every. single. time.

What I do know is that I'm no Sarah. Throughout this process of moving across the country, I've struggled with the realities of my own heart. Before we left Frankfort, I thought I knew the main issues and idols that God was sloughing off, but then we arrived at 4001 Moss Creek Drive and reality set in. I realized that for so long, I'd thought I loved Jesus. I thought I'd been open and submitted to wherever.  I even thought I found my hope and trust in Him--that He was my rock, but then I woke up on a Saturday morning in Fort Collins, Colorado and realized that none of those things had really been true.

These past four weeks have been some of the most painful for me, mostly because the Lord has used them to show me how much I had trusted in my own abilities and power and how little I had really relied upon Him. More importantly, and this is a biggie, He's shown me just how much I've loved other things, other people, places more than I've loved Him. What a jarring and painful realization to come to! It is the Lord's kindness to show me the uglies in my  heart---even if it is oh so painful!

I know God brought us here to plant a church. Every day I live in this city, I'm more acutely aware of the need for a church that preaches and teaches the gospel. I know He is doing a work here and we get to be a part of it, but God brought me here to show me Himself. To teach me that He really is enough. Period. No caveat. No exceptions. Just Him. He's enough. When my baby boy is struggling with homesickness, crying, pitching a fit and I look around for some way to make it better, He reminds me that this was His idea and He's doing a work inside of my youngest that even I don't understand and I don't have to give my approval for it to happen. I just have to get out of the way and pray.

The beauty of the mountains does not replace the beauty of the relationships God blessed us with in Frankfort. God gave me a beautiful life in my Old Kentucky Home. It's only right that I give it back to Him, that I go, even if I feel a little (or a lot) reluctant in my heart. You see, to do anything else would be to make an idol of it. So here I am, a thousand plus miles away from that beautiful life in a place where nothing is familiar, BUT GOD... He does not change and is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

I know that even as painful as the sloughing off is, God is doing a better work inside of me. He really is enough. Even if I never make a true friend here, if the unfamiliar never becomes familiar, if I always feel like an outsider, He is enough. Maybe that's what Sarah understood. Maybe that's what she hoped in and found her hope to be in the only everlasting Rock.