This month marks one year of moving out to our 25-acre farm. The move was a big one for our family, and brought about many new changes, including a new community and entirely new way of living for us. Many changes were unexpected, some were bittersweet, and some were pretty darn amazing.
If you've been following along with us, you know we follow Jesus and God's great commission to share His gospel with the world. I, the SSL Family Mom, am employed by our church in our old town and our family has been serving together there for years. Our pastors there speak the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth. We love our church.
BUT, God.
God clearly started stirring in our hearts shortly after we moved out to our new community, and put a burden on our hearts for our new friends and neighbors. There's a wonderful, miraculous story of how it all came about, but the big change and exciting news is that for the past eight months we have been planning and helping to plant a brand new church in our new community with one of the pastors from our church. Last Sunday our church prayed over our families and sent us off to our new work in the rural community we now live in. And yesterday was our very first worship gathering with our new church.
It was AMAZING.
We also decided to homeschool our two youngest daughters this year. I know what you're thinking. OF COURSE THEY DID. We live in the country, we're Christians, we're the weird people, and you would be correct on all of those points. It just makes complete sense for us to homeschool and I'm looking forward to sharing with you all the reasons why and what curriculum we chose and why we chose it. But for now, I'll tell you this, after just a few weeks into it, it is by far one of the BEST decisions we've ever made for our children.
Now for the unexpected......
Almost two months ago, I got a text from the SSL Family Dad to come straight home, that he had something to tell me. This has only happened to us one other time before, and the last time was when he got the orders for his deployment to Iraq when I was seven months pregnant with our middle daughter. This couldn't be good. Well, he wasn't in the Army anymore, so I knew it couldn't be that. What could it be? My mind was racing. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. I jumped in my car and headed straight for home where he told me that his company let go hundreds of employees that morning, including his boss, and his boss' boss, and including him.
I cried. And cried. Why? Why was this happening, and why at this particular time? This was not in our plan. I choked back my tears and told him we were going to be fine. I didn't want him to see me hurting or think he had let me down in some way. But the news hurt. We prayed together. I cried for the next couple days, but then something deep down hit me, and that something was God's promises. God knows what's best for us, and if He allowed this to happen, then this is the best for us, so why was I crying? This feeling of peace washed over me and my fears turned to excitement. And ever since then we've been excited to see how God will provide and what job He has next for him.
The SSL Family Dad's last day of employment with the company he's worked with for over 14 years was just a few days ago. The company was good to us, he was able to work from home for a season, and we are so grateful for that. And we know God is going to provide in such awesome ways that when we look back on this, we will be completely blown away and so thankful this happened.
"Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." Hebrews 11:1