Ready? 1...2...3...Cannonbaaaalllll!

So, it's been four months since I've written.  Anything.  That creative and thoughtful part of my brain totally shut down when we invited all sorts of crazy into our lives with Army enlistment.  We have sold the house we lived in for 8 years (which is its own crazy story), moved in with in-laws, left a wonderful school district, submitted a resignation from a job I have loved, and the hardest thing of all: preparing to say good-bye to the church that has loved us, sustained us, and changed us.  All this while doing my best to figure out what to do with my present while all my ideas about what our future would have held unraveled and then knit itself together in a radically different pattern. 

The new pattern has lots of camo in it.

And combat boots.  And automatic weapons.  And acronyms.  And long lonely nights while my soldier is away doing what needs to be done.


But this new future is lovely in its own way.  It will involve lots of change.  But change is the essence of an adventurous life.  There will even be pain.  But pain is the key to growth and, to borrow a phrase I learned recently, all growth is spiritual growth. 

Some people, upon hearing this truth and desiring spiritual growth for themselves, creep along the edge of change and dip their toes in, gradually warming up to it.  Not us.  We grasped each other's hands, took a flying leap, and plunged in cannonball-style.  Not because we are more brave or adventurous than the next family.  But because the pain of staying the same was worse than the pain of change.  Sometimes, that's what it takes to get a person to move.

I could be the type who holds a grudge against God for allowing calamity to reign down on our lives with the first devastating job loss that got this ball rolling.  At the time it seemed like the end of everything good in our lives.  Now I realize that it was only a stumble.  We got kicked in the shins  and limped along for the next few years, rebuilding, surviving, looking for silver linings, thinking the worst was over.  There were uniforms hanging in the house again.  The smell of leather and gun cleaner was like perfume to me.

But it was not to last.  The next time we got punched squarely in the gut.  While we were writhing around on the floor, trying to suck a life-giving breath into our lungs, God was quietly bringing together a plan that would set us on our current course.  But before we could take the first step, we had to be looking up at it from where we lay.  Only then would we see it clearly, accept it, have joy in it, and do the cannonball into it.

Only now I believe that its not only each other's hands we are holding.  According to Psalm 37, "The Lord directs the steps of the godly.  He delights in every detail of their lives.  Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand."

I'm not quite ready to look back on our lives and delight in all the details, but God, who sees the beginning, the present, and the future, does.  And as I look as far as my limited imagination can see into the new future that has been knitted together, before I take a step, I will reach my hand up and hold on tight as He takes me on the ride of my life.