As many of you may or may not know, I recently moved to Rochester, Minnesota. I was offered a full time position as Assistant Camp Director at Camp Victory in Zumbro Falls at the end of April. May 26 I packed up my stuff, and my parents and best friend Olivia moved me into my 3rd floor apartment about 20 minutes from my job.
Praying It Wouldn’t Happen
While this is my dream job, many people don’t know that I prayed God would give it to someone else. Two days before I was offered the job I spent a lot of my time crying because I was so afraid of moving. I had spent my entire life in Michigan. My friends and family were all in Michigan, I had the best living situation of my entire life, and I was finally feeling settled. I had been praying for a camp job for almost a year, but I wanted my dream job on my own terms. I remember telling God, “If this is the door you are going to open for me, I will walk through it. But I really really don’t want to.”
Two days later I got the phone call with a job offer. I told them I wanted a day to consider, and I called back the next day to accept. Some of my friends were nervous for me because I was so afraid. They told me maybe I should reconsider and stay in Michigan because I had so much anxiety and nerves about moving. I assured them that this was the right choice and I knew that God had opened this door for me. I had to be obedient.
Walking Through Open Doors
I have been in Minnesota for just over two months now. In some ways, the move has been way easier than I thought it would be. And in other ways, it has been much harder. I have never experienced the feelings of truly missing people the way I do now, and I don’t really know how to process it or put it into words.
I am afraid to tell my friends I am struggling. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my job. I wouldn’t trade this season of life for anything. I am learning so much and I get to experience so many new things and people. And I truly believe that this is a job I have been made for. But that doesn’t make it any easier to uproot myself and leave friends and family behind. I am afraid to tell my friends I am struggling because I already feel bad for leaving them, and I am afraid they will try to convince me to move home if they know that this is hard for me.
I was listening to a song the other day that I have heard quite a few times, but for some reason this time the lyrics stuck out to me differently. It’s called A Man Named Job, by Ryan Proudfoot. The lyric that hit me differently says “Shall we take good from God, and not evil?”
God is good. We know that in His word. (Psalm 34:8, Psalm 86:5, 1 Chronicles 16:34, Nahum 1:7) But we also know that God doesn’t say we will not experience difficulty.
Romans 8:35-37 says “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things alter are more than conquerors through him who loves us.”
This verse does NOT say that we will never experience the difficulties listed, it says that God will never leave us in the midst of them.
KNOWING GOD IS GOOD
I talk about David a lot because he is an admirable person to me. A lot of the psalms that I reference, both in this blog and in previous, were written by him in a time of his life that wasn’t good. I can’t imagine being exiled in the wilderness to avoid being killed and still writing poems about God’s goodness and faithfulness. But he did because He knew and believed that God was with him and that He was good, even though his circumstances were not.
My life is very good. But that doesn’t mean that every day and event I experience is good. I believe that God has called me to the season I am in now. I don’t know how long I will be here. I don’t know what my life will look like in 6 months or two years or even next week. But I also know that I miss my friends. I miss Lake Michigan. I miss being known and knowing an area like the back of my hand (literally because I use my hand as a map). Sometimes I feel scared that I will never be able to find a community like what I had before I left. Or even a church community that was as solid as the one I joined before I moved.
But I do know this: that God is a GOOD God.
That ultimately, my life is for His glory and purpose. And if I have to go through a little bit of growing pain in order for that to happen, then I will take good AND bad from God, knowing that He is still good.
