Dear Theophilus Archive: October 2002

The Amazing Hands of God

One summer morning, I woke up early at a campground that I was staying at in Tennessee. It was my second week of work with youth groups, preparing them for inner city ministry with children. As I walked from my tent to sit on the picnic table a few yards away, I felt the dew of the grass on my feet and smelled the moisture in the air. I sat at the picnic table and looked at the nearby body of water. As I looked at the water, my summer plans became as clear to me as they could at that point in my life. I did not know why God had sent me to Tennessee for the summer, but I knew that He had me there for His reason. My mind wandered as I looked at the fog over the body of water and as I was praying in preparation for the day, I imagined God’s hand reaching out to me through the clouds and asking me to grab hold of it and to trust Him. I could not see what the future held, but I knew I would be serving God and that I could trust Him. I grabbed hold of His hand that summer and He showed me amazing things about Himself. Today I am grabbing hold of His hand for a different reason, but I know that the outcome will be glorifying His Name as He is the One in charge of what is to come. (Philippians 4:6-7)

Today’s version of that story: for the last year I have been conversing with God about His hand in my life as a professional and a wife. Last year my husband told me that he had a strong desire to move to New York City. Okay, “strong desire” is slightly understating how he really felt, but I will just write that. Anyway, I thought it was strange because we were talking about moving to the west coast after I finished graduate school. However, he all of a sudden felt a different calling and was very excited about the idea of moving to New York City. I could not understand this and I struggled within myself to understand why God would place this on his heart and not mine. After all, we’ve always had the same feelings about where we wanted to move next and were always content with our decisions. However, this time, God was presenting us with a challenge.

I struggled throughout the year to really feel comfortable with knowing that God wanted us to move to New York City. I did not have any reason to be anywhere else, but I did not want to make the commitment to go somewhere I did not feel called to be. There were several different thoughts running through my head during this time. I thought that my husband was not listening to my feelings. I thought that there was no way I could live in a big city as I had a hard enough time adjusting to Philly. I thought that I was never going to find a job in a big city in the specific field I was interested. All of these selfish desires were overwhelming my life and marriage. However, one day as I was praying, the Holy Spirit really spoke to me. The thoughts that came to my mind were more about how I am in a marriage and that God could be showing me through my husband where He wanted us to be. In addition, the more I prayed about moving to New York City, the more the Lord opened my heart to moving there.

About two months ago, my husband told me that he really felt as though he had given to God the idea of moving somewhere other than New York City and was ready to tell me that he would go anywhere. At this point, our marriage became stronger. We both gave all of our desires and aspirations to the Lord and told Him to open doors wherever He wanted us to be. We both grabbed hold of His hand, trusting that He would provide for us. He opened doors for us to New York City and now we are holding on to God’s hand through the moving process and praying every day that He will use us there. (Proverbs 3:5-6)