Fleshly Wants vs. Desires of Our Hearts

For anyone who has followed this blog for the past year, it is clear that nothing has gone the way that we anticipated. Last year at this time, we thought that we would be in Nicaragua doing mission work right now. Our plans changed, but the One we follow had a plan that was immovable.

We began looking to the next step on our path. I had a few criteria for our next home.

1. I wanted to go westward, preferably California.
2. I wanted to be close to a seminary, not an extension.
3. I was looking for a large city.
4. I also hoped for a place with an autism center that provided all of the care that the neurologist who diagnosed DeLaynie recommended.

Well, we don't always get what we want (Praise the Lord!!!). Here's how our new home stacks up:

1. We live in Northern New York, which is pretty far east.
2. There is a seminary extension three hours away, but it's not really an option for me at this time.
3. Our village is just that- a village. It's not big enough to qualify as a town, never mind a city.
4. DeLaynie goes to a generalized special education class at the public school.

If you read this post and think that I'm disappointed, you're wrong. All the things that I listed above are simply wants. They don't seem fleshly. They all seem like good things, but God didn't place those desires within me. The desires that God gave me look more like this:

1. A place where there are lost people who have few Christians to reach them.
2. Somewhere that Edwin's style of ministry is accepted well enough by the church that it can be effective. (Like it or not, this matters.)
3. I long to be able to use some of the gifts that God has given me to do something other than support Edwin. Don't get me wrong, I love being a pastor's wife, and it is always my main area of ministry, but God just didn't design me to make that my only ministry.
4. An education for DeLaynie that accepts her strengths and her weaknesses without constantly comparing them to symptom lists for various disorders. (Allow me to say that I'm actually very glad that DeLaynie isn't in an autism program at this point. Her teachers help DeLaynie to be the very best DeLaynie she can be without worrying about diagnoses. Next year, she should be able to be in the regular education preschool class with an aide!)

In these things, God has been incredibly faithful. I love our new home. I love our church. I love the potential that the local children of God have to reach the world around them. It's not what I expected, but it is so much more! And you want to know the things that excites me the most? The training we received to do mission work has completely changed the way that I see local church ministry! I know that we are more effective here because of it, and I thank God for the disappointment and pain that it took to get us here. He is completely worth it!

Lord, please let us be faithful as we labor in Your name.