{"id":509,"date":"2011-11-26T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-26T18:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/saturday-november-26-2011\/"},"modified":"2011-11-26T13:45:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-26T18:45:00","slug":"saturday-november-26-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/saturday-november-26-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday November 26, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our life is on the verge of changing in more ways than I can count. David has been asked to work at Allegany Boys Camp (read more about it here<\/a>) as family worker. It’s been two months and sometimes I still can’t quite grasp it all. But after the interview Monday night and unanimous approval from the board, it feels somewhat official.<\/p>\n

Some days I am so excited I wish we could move next month instead of waiting til next summer. I love the ministry of camp. I am beyond excited to see David function in this world because he is not only talented in working with people, his heart and passion are at camp. I know the opposite is usually true when people go into ministry of some sort, but I think we are actually going to have more time for our family there than we do here. But most of all, it has been so exciting to see God show us where He is leading. Ever since January we’ve felt this burning inside us. The feeling that God was preparing us for something. The unrest with life as we knew it. The feeling that there could be so much more to life than what we were living. A growing longing to get involved with people and to make a difference in their lives. Sometimes it was just there. Sometimes it felt like so much heaviness. Because it is hard to feel like you’re moving into something not knowing what that something is. What if I don’t like where this is taking us?<\/p>\n

So when Chief Brian called that Thursday in September and left a message on David’s voice mail, I knew. I just knew. I didn’t even tell David, I just bugged and bugged and bugged him to call back. To a measure, the “knowing” felt like relief.  It feels so different than the time two years ago when we were asked to go to Bald Eagle Boys Camp in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Other days, I’m dreading it. When the two of us sat down together and talked straight about the decision instead of just throwing comments around, we made a list of pros and cons.  My list of cons were so embarrassing I didn’t really want to show it to God. Embarrassing or not, it doesn’t make them less hard or less real. I feel incredibly grateful to God for those months of getting us ready. In a lot of ways, he changed my heart before he asked me to give things up. Things I’d have been kicking and screaming about two years ago (like homeschooling), are almost a non-issue now. Other things are still big issues.<\/p>\n

Probably one of the hardest things of all isn’t even what we’re giving up but the way we have to hold it all so loosely. The not knowing kills me.<\/p>\n

We can’t go unless the house sells. It’s going to take a miracle to sell our house in a market that has been crawling and pretty much come to a complete stop. It is a horrible, horrible time to sell a house even if it does sell. We’ve lost huge numbers from our first appraisal to the current one because of the economic plunge. It’s not one bit fun to think about selling the house we dreamed of and worked for in so many hard, labor-intensive, given-up-vacation ways …. but it’s even less fun to think that we would be further ahead financially had we never built it. So much for sweat equity.<\/p>\n

That means we will spend our next months getting ready to go. Preparing ourselves mentally and physically and emotionally. But in the end, we could end up not being able to go. Weird? Yes. True? Yes. Exciting? Yes. Sad? Yes. <\/p>\n

Also unlike most mission things people do at our church, this isn’t a two or maybe three year commitment. It’s long term. So it’s a minimum of two years (the escape plan if it doesn’t work for them or for us) with the expectation of long term. This is a life change. Not a we can do this for two years change.<\/p>\n

I wish that I could wrap this all up neatly saying how thrilled I am and how it is all just so worth it. Some days it really is. But I’d be lying if I said I could always see it. David says he thinks he better have me sign a paper saying I’m going voluntarily. The men all laughed when I told them that in the interview. “What, so he can pull it out and remind you,” Brian asked. Nope, because he thinks he better post it on the bathroom wall!<\/p>\n

But really, it’s not about whether camp matches me (or even David who looks like the perfect match) and what I like or what and where I thrive. It’s about where we’re going. Just days after being asked I read II Timothy 1:9 Who hath saved us, and <\/span>called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace<\/span>, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s what I really need on our bathroom wall.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our life is on the verge of changing in more ways than I can count. David has been asked to work at Allegany Boys Camp (read more about it here)… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39ynQ-8d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}