Seeing God in the little things

Or maybe they are big things. So some of you reading my blog may read this title and not want to read one line further, but it's hard to ignore that my God isn't at work here in our lives. And yes, I said MY God, read on to find out why.

So, one thing you ALL know is my apprehension in moving here, though it's part of this gig we're in called the military, it's not an easy feat. I mean, why God are we being torn from the very community that you've rooted us in and being moved to the middle of nowhere with no family to speak of and Lord, I know you created it all, but Kansas?! Really, Kansas? Don't you remember that there's no ocean in Kansas? Well, within a day of finding out this would be our new home a friend from church said, "hey, I was born and raised in Leavenworth." Okay, open mouth Angie, insert foot...sorry to offend you Carrie! She began giving me a wealth of information about our new home. Okay, then I find out that there is a family living here that is friends of many of our friends in the church and they put me in touch with her. She gives me another vault of information. Then, we find out there are all these other connections to Leavenworth. Jonas' preschool teacher just had a student the year before who moved here and she put me in touch with his mom, who gave me more info AND when I attended spouses day here, she saught me out and introduced herself! We have chatted with friends of friends and found out that actually, we do have family just about 3 hours away. Okay, God, I'm listening now.

Well, with all that coming about BEFORE our move here, I resigned to go with the "God knows what He's doing and He's paved the way for us so far" attitude. Nonetheless, leaving all we know and love in VA was torture, but sometimes that is what we have to endure for experiencing the glory of God.

Hmm, we pull up to our new house and I look across the street at our neighbors house, they have a Jesus fish on their van, good sign! A few days after we moved in, their 9 year old son went knocking on doors throughout the neighborhood looking for some kids to play, great icebreaker. We'd noticed they had a younger boy also, maybe about Jonas' age. HA, he IS Jonas' age and they have become little buddies in no time at all. The couple, they're great! We've attended church with them and LOVED the church, just not the drive, it's 30 minutes one way. We've enjoyed celebrating our first holiday with them, gone to the zoo and began our 1 year Kansas experience with them. Thank you Lord for providing us friends and thank you friends back east, who prayed for just that.

So, I'm desperately seeking out a mom's group or women's ministry...Tab, you've sure got a good thing going there! It feels like I keep coming up dry. Then, I remember an old friend told me about Protestant Women of the Chapel (PWOC-the military has acroynms for everything) so I look into it. They have childcare...so we get up early and head over to "post" another new thing I have to get used to, the Army lingo. I step into this huge brand new chapel and am immediately greeted and told which way to take my kids and where to find this PWOC group I came in search of. WOW...this group knocked my socks off! The ladies ranged from young to retired and were friendly from the moment I stepped in, heck, they had me taking offering on my first visit. I even saw some faces and heard some voices, that made me look twice. I could've sworn I saw and heard Linda Crabtree at this meeting. Their worship time was great, followed by some fellowship, and of course food and then on to studying Colossians. The chaplain's wife lead the study that day and she ROCKED it! The thing that struck me the most about her words was finding out who YOUR Jesus is. So often we as women look to someone else to tell us how to do something. If life isn't working, we ask others for how they do it. "How do you do quiet time, that's what I must be doing wrong?" "How do you pray, I must not be doing it right?" And other examples of these God seeking things that we feel we must do. And that's not what it's about. It's about who He is in your season of life for YOU personally. As she said, "getting up at 5 a.m. to do quiet time before my kids get up isn't working for me, it's too much stress, I can't do this." That's not what it has to be...maybe your quiet time is singing praise songs in the shower or something else like that. So this week, I'm in search of MY Jesus. I walked out of there refreshed, excited and happy to be where I am.

I'm finally in a group of Marine wives, though we're few (and yes, proud too) and we've planned a full social calendar for the year, including dinner out tonight. I met one spouse who is a scrapbooker, YES! And we're planning on going to a convention here in October. Which, for all my Hampton Roads friends, the year I leave they bring a scrapbook convention. It is August 27 & 28 at the VB Convention Center.

I keep hearing from you all, 'how are you doing all this, you sound so busy'. That's the thing guys, I'm not. I've never been more relaxed and at ease than I am right now at this very moment! I take a nap just about every day, I'm finding myself getting less and less frustrated at the kids (I didn't say I'm not frustrated), I'm able to find niches of time to do the things that I want to do, like scrapping, reading books that I actually enjoy (not anatomy textbooks) and doing a study on Ruth that all my Tab friends are doing back home. Life is good here! I still miss my home on S. Ridgeley like crazy...that's where our hearts are, but this is okay too! The Lord paved the way, brought us here and has met us in our need. This is who MY God is, He's in the details, the small ones and the big ones.