We’ve been taking turns In our small group giving our testimonies. This week was my turn, and as I’ve been reflecting on my life, God’s providence has been evident. It’s always clearer to us looking backward, isn’t it? Many of the life-altering changes in my life have been brought about by God pulling me forward or pushing me out.
My early-in-life plan was a career of teaching, which I did for several years to my delight. Then a situation happened at the private school where I was teaching that I felt that I could not support, and so God was using that to push me out. It was that change that brought about our decision to begin our family, which opened a new dimension to life that I had never even imagined. And we began to educate/train/disciple our girls at home.
When our daughters were 4 and 7, I got pulled in to living in Venezuela. God used those years to work in my heart and mind in ways that forever changed me. When asked how long we were there, My Beloved says two years, and I say too long. They were difficult years, but years that brought tremendous spiritual growth for both of us.
After being back home for a year and a half, God pulled us into another temporary transfer to Houston, hundreds of miles away where we knew no one. This experience was another life-changer. We had been homeschooling for several years, but knew no one else who was doing it back in the 80s. We got involved in a church with many homeschooling families in Houston, some who were high schoolers, which at that time was a new way of thinking about education. It opened our eyes to what could lie ahead for our family. The assignment was over too soon, and we had to return home. Pushed out by God once again. We did not want to leave, but we had no idea what He had planned for us once we got back home. A new way of life opened to us that I could have lived in forever. Having experienced the blessings of knowing other families who were training their children as we were, we searched and found some in our own hometown. At our first meeting we had 12 families. We began a local support group and was on the founding state Christian organization. When we finished our journey, we had over 200 families in the local group. And to think that those years began when God pushed us out a place we didn't want to leave.
I went to graduate school after our girls were graduated from homeschooling, then returned to the classroom for a few years. But it was interfering with higher priorities in my life, and God used those priorities to pull me back home. The next few years were arid in many ways, and God used those feelings of loneliness to turn my heart to moving nearer my parents to help in their care as well as to become more familiar with my cognitively handicapped sister's care, whose care we’ll have when my parents are gone.
That pull brought us also to a wonderful new church family that has embraced us from the very first visit. They help me keep my equilibrium.
It is often the looking back when we see God’s Hand most clearly working good into our lives--when He has pushed and pulled and provided. He is truly our loving and faithful God.
Image - Reading Goethes Werther, Wilhelm Amberg Vorlesung , 1870
public domain, Wikimedia Commons
