Our Unwanted & Unexpected

43 hours total driving in 2 separate cars.

I just drove across the country for the 5th time as we moved from New York to Arizona. It was two weeks without our things, waiting for our moving truck, pregnant and sleeping on the floor with an air mattress and using the stairs as our table.

I’m tired of moving and problem solving and starting over and sacrificing. But God asks us to do hard things. It’s part of it all.

Sometimes He asks us to leave our family and move across the country, multiple times, like me.

Sometimes He asks us to loose all our friends and be persecuted and judged, like me. Sometimes He asks us to do soul stretching and completely tear down and rebuild kind of changes, like me. Sometimes He asks us to experience multiple bouts of long term unemployment, like us. Or asks us to wait. Or to give up. Or to move past something important. And sometimes it will take a lot of focus and crying and you wonder if our efforts are in vain, like me.

But because of it all, I know God. And I love Him with a real love. And I couldn’t trade that knowledge and relationship for anything.

Our passions and righteous desires can sometimes be the cause of looking beyond the mark and stop us from allowing God to be God in our life. And we end up standing still.

But I’ve learned that all my unexpected and unwanted is hand-picked by God Himself. I keep going and sacrificing through my wonder and my doubt and my fatigue and discomfort because I’ve experienced every time that MY FAVORITE THINGS HAVE COME FROM MY UNWANTED PATHS God has brought my down.

I think we forget that. I think we forget that the unexpected is God intervening. I think we forget that His whole purpose is to bring us to the *best things. I think we forget that we don’t truly want things our way. I think we forget how THRILLING it is to live by faith.

Take heart in things not going how you wanted, take heart in your unexpected, in your hard, in your confusing, and unplanned, it’s God hand-crafting a path for you.

Because sometimes I think we forget that God knows something we don’t. Something greater. xox AL

VIDEOS: Saying goodbye to NY Family: https://bit.ly/2LMKCX8 Moving Across the Country: https://youtu.be/rQpuJ6WpCyg Arriving to AZ: https://youtu.be/GY6LVwKQoc8

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