For over a year, I've had this file on my desktop:
It's the flight information for my August 5, 2012 flight from Beijing to Cedar Rapids. I don't know why I still have it on my desktop, except as a reminder of the remarkably strange feeling of staring down a blank slate.
A year ago this week, I was raveling up three years in China. The only things on my calendar were my flight home on August 5 and a friend's wedding a couple weeks later. I literally had nothing else planned. I didn't know what city I would live in, what kind of job I would have, what church I would attend, what car I would drive, or if I would have any friends.
Looking at the blank slate in retrospect, I can see that God filled it:
Two of those items are job interviews, two of them are car repairs for a car I'd just bought (haha!), and several of them are meetings with family and friends that I really missed while I was away. I know that God provides for us in different ways in different times in our lives; I could have a blank slate still and he would nonetheless be my provider, because He knows best. But I am so thankful for how He quickly and abundantly provided for me last year.
This post is my expression of gratitude for a good church, a good job, a good house, and friends and family who have welcomed me back to America and to my new home in Des Moines.
Philippians 4:6 says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." He is faithful.
Please be thinking of me this week as I mourn the passing of a full year since I left my beloved China.
It's the flight information for my August 5, 2012 flight from Beijing to Cedar Rapids. I don't know why I still have it on my desktop, except as a reminder of the remarkably strange feeling of staring down a blank slate.
A year ago this week, I was raveling up three years in China. The only things on my calendar were my flight home on August 5 and a friend's wedding a couple weeks later. I literally had nothing else planned. I didn't know what city I would live in, what kind of job I would have, what church I would attend, what car I would drive, or if I would have any friends.
Looking at the blank slate in retrospect, I can see that God filled it:
Two of those items are job interviews, two of them are car repairs for a car I'd just bought (haha!), and several of them are meetings with family and friends that I really missed while I was away. I know that God provides for us in different ways in different times in our lives; I could have a blank slate still and he would nonetheless be my provider, because He knows best. But I am so thankful for how He quickly and abundantly provided for me last year.
This post is my expression of gratitude for a good church, a good job, a good house, and friends and family who have welcomed me back to America and to my new home in Des Moines.
Philippians 4:6 says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." He is faithful.
Please be thinking of me this week as I mourn the passing of a full year since I left my beloved China.
