Over the Top

Delightful dish, Tortellini Salad from Supernatural Everyday which just arrived in the mail!

You would think that the rows or fresh cheeses or endless pasta choices (orzo!) would do it to me. Or the shelves neatly stacked with bed linens in beautiful colors and high thread counts would send me over the top.

Or to stray from the consumer arena, maybe it should be the little bounty of fresh produce we haul in from the garden each day; this week broccoli and asparagus and fresh mulberries with rhubarb, next month heirloom tomatoes, snow peas and sweet peppers. If that wasn’t enough, maybe it should be the thick carpet of grass that stretches an acre plus behind the house and is free of any dog droppings or spots where a taxi driver (or twenty) may have relieved himself.

The blue skies, so so blue. The fresh air. The familiar sound of my own language. A bookstore. Driving. I already mentioned the cheese (feta, everyday. Shaved parmesan for dinner. Goat, tomorrow).

But lo and behold, let me tell you, in all of God’s goodness that he showers on me each day, the greatest to me right now is that I am not filled with regret, or longing to stay in this place, my home away from home. I am delighted to be here. I am relishing the days and the sunshine and my children getting dirty in the backyard with their cousins each day. I am soaking up all the good food. I am refreshed daily by the presence of my gracious and loving family. But I can, and I will, with a full heart, leave this place.

The past several months have been difficult, with goodbyes and the sorrow that comes when you have to leave a place you have rooted into, and that you love. But with the leaving has also been the assurance, perhaps moreso than ever before in our lives, that this is a move God is asking us to make.

That sounds, well, strong to me. I don’t hear God speak. I ask him for direction. I trust that He leads me. I read His Word and believe that it is Truth spoken both to my daily circumstance as well as the big picture of my life and the whole of the world and history. But I don’t know Hear his voice audibly, which makes knowing what he is saying for certain nearly impossible, which is also why much of His leading can be an unnerving thing to follow.

 But we have sensed His leading in the ways that He graciously does so, and in choosing to follow, regardless of the discomfort or sadness or possibility of great upheaval in our lives, we have experienced His peace. He is a strength-giver after all, and in our weakness, he is able most to shine all strong and glorious. I already sense that strength; in the contentment, in the peace, in the fact that though things don’t look exactly promising, I am not afraid of the leaving or of what may come.

So right now we are enjoying all the simple and delightful pleasures around us, and preparing to take a few of those back with us, of course. But more than anything I am taking with me this daily assurance, this inner joy that is given each step of the way.