Kind of a shock to the system

Everything has been up in the air for us regarding our trip to Oregon for the next couple of months.  My brother-in-law has been living in adult foster care most of this year, so we’re not sure where we will be living.  But today, we got more unsettling news…

For the last two holiday seasons, Mark has been working at an RV service place called B. Young RV in Wilsonville, OR.  When we realized we probably won’t be able to stay at Fred’s house this year, we thought about the first year Mark worked at B. Young RV.  That year, one of the RV techs had his RV parked onsite and he boondocked there, so we thought it would be worth a try to see if we could stay onsite there this year.  Mark called a little over a month ago to inquire about that and discovered that there’s a new manager in the tech department.  The new manager, Ryan, told Mark then that they were going to be moving to a new facility this month and he suggested Mark call back later.  Mark has been trying to reach him, but he’s been out of the office every day until today.

Mark just called Ryan and spoke with him and Ryan said that at their new facility they have plenty of RV techs, so he won’t be needing Mark’s services.  This is a possibility we hadn’t considered since they asked him last year if he’d be coming back this year.  Now, neither of us has a job lined up, although I’ve begun filling out applications, and we have no place to park our RV.  This could make for a very interesting holiday season!

So lately, my sister, Lauryn, and I have been going through a book called 66 Love Letters by Dr. Larry Crabb.  The 66 love letters are the 66 books of the Bible, and the book goes through each, even the difficult ones, to show how God is being loving toward us throughout.  It starts out with us messing up big time in Genesis and talks about how self-centered we’ve become.  Each of us wants to be comfortable and happy and we don’t like it when things get hard, so we turn to God and ask Him to fix it for us.  A sort of mantra that runs throughout the books I’ve been through so far is that God isn’t interested in making us happy; He wants to make us holy.  The things we set our hopes and desires on in this life disappoint, and only if we strive towards heaven will we ever be truly happy.

Simultaneously, I bought both of Lauren Daigle’s CDs and I’ve been immersing myself in them.  She is a young Christian musician whose songs point to God’s goodness, His love, and His trustworthiness in the midst of our pain.  Some of her lines come into my head throughout the day:

  • “I can’t stop thinking about Your goodness, goodness, and I remember, I remember, You have always been faithful to me…You were there, always there, with me.”
  • “You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing, You say I am strong when I think I am weak, You say I am held when I am falling short, and when I don’t belong, You say I am Yours, and I believe, I believe what You say of me.”
  • “When You don’t move the mountains I’m needing You to move, when You don’t part the waters I wish I could walk through, when You don’t give the answers as I cry out to You, I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in You.”

So I am not going to ask you to pray that we will find a place to stay or that we will find jobs.  If you pray for us at all, please pray that I will place my trust in God who knows the future and that I will learn whatever He wants to teach me about holiness through this situation.  I am going to try to let go of anxiety and trust that everything is going according to God’s plan.  I have never starved to death, I have never had to sleep on a park bench, and God will provide for us this time as well.  So be it.  Amen!

One thought on “Kind of a shock to the system

  1. Amen and amen big sister! As His sheep, we lack nothing! He never promised to give us everything we want, but in Him and through those He places in our lives, we shall have all that we need. Our needs oftentimes don’t come in the ways that “we expect” but HE knows best! He’s a good, good Father and we are SO loved by Him!

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