Life Down Under

A whole bunch of random thoughts

It's hard to believe the weekend has come....and gone. Some friends of ours from Wellington came up here to Tauranga for the weekend, and stayed with us last night. We had a great time catching up with them and really enjoyed having them here.

It's been great having Aaron home these last several days. Life has still been pretty full-on, but it has been full-on together, which is always more fun than living life full-on apart! This week he goes back to Wellington, and then will be home for a couple of weeks. As much as I miss him when he's gone, I can definitely tell that there is lots of grace for us in this season, for which I am so thankful.

Speaking of being thankful, I was home with Taylor the other morning just going about my day when I started thinking about all that has happened this last year and how the Lord has led us so kindly, and I was just so grateful. I realized that so many of the things that are just "normal life" for us now weren't guaranteed to us when we moved here, and how the Lord has given above and beyond what we ever could have thought. I mean, when we moved here, we knew the Lord had called us, but we didn't know how anything would turn out. We didn't know if we'd make any friends. We didn't know if the internship would be a failure. We didn't know if anyone would show up. We didn't know if I would hate it here and miserable. We didn't know if we would see any growth, or if there would be years of painful 'sowing' before we saw the fruit of our labor. I guess it just struck me that things could have easily turned out so differently than they did, and I am so, so grateful to the Lord that He has been with us and that it hasn't been nearly as hard here as it could have been. That's not to say we haven't had difficult moments, but really - things could have been so much worse than they have actually been.

Now, that's a good realization to have.