The Unexpected Story...

Almost 5 years ago, I remember standing in front of the church with a smile as wide as Texas, hopes and dreams bursting at the seams, expectant of what God was going to do, and trying to capture it all with a selfie.  We had just taken a leap of faith, left a 12 year ministry streak in a place we had come to call home, and moved ourselves to a place that was familiar and foreign all at the same time.  I remember looking at Nate and saying, "Can you believe we get to Pastor here?"

We had found ourselves on the campus of Eastern Nazarene College, a college that had not only educated us, but had shaped us profoundly.  It was the place where we had learned the best life is a surrendered life and where God had begun to speak loud and clear about what he had created us to do.  It wasn't just about being on campus again that excited us either.  We were going to get to work for one of our college mentors in a church that was smack dab in the middle of city that desperately needed to know the love of Christ.  We were ready.  We were bursting with hopes and dreams.  And we were expectant.

Ten years ago I found myself in a season where I was expectant, hopeful and full of dreams.  I was 30 years old, struggling with infertility and about ready to enter into my last and final round of medical treatment, one that I believed with all of my heart would lead to a little one growing in my womb.  Little did I know, maybe due to my naivety, life doesn't always turn out the way you expected.  That December, I would receive the final call from Doctor, gently breaking the news that our medical treatment for the third and final time had failed.

To be honest, I wasn't sure what to do with that news.  It kind of rocked my personal world, stole some joy, and caused me to enter into this real and honest conversation with God.  I was broken.  I was hurting.  And I wasn't even sure what to do most days.  So I started writing.  More specifically, I started blogging, not to gain accolades from followers, but because in the honest writing, I discovered more about myself and a whole lot more about God.  It was when those two discoveries collided that I found out  His story for our life is so much better than the one we try to write for ourselves.

It's been almost a full year since I've blogged.  While I wish I had some awesome reason like I was traveling the world and didn't have time, the truth is, this year has been challenging for me, and for some reason writing about that reality has been a struggle.  Life has looked different than I had expected.  Some of the things I though would happen in my life didn't.  There were circumstances that I was faced with that I wished I could have hit a delete button on.  Some of the things that I had dreamed up for my life or had hoped for just didn't pan out.  Disappointment has been a reality.  Choosing joy has been a challenge.

About 8 weeks ago, our Pastor announced his resignation, the same one who had invited us to take a leap of faith and come to this familiar yet foreign land.  Truth be told, the past 8 weeks I've spent a lot of time talking to God.  This wasn't exactly the chapter I had expected would be written.  In fact, the current chapter feels pretty unwritten and there are days where I would like to pick up the pen and write it out myself for him (you know...just in case God wants a break or something!).

Here's the thing.  If I've learned anything over the last decade of my life, the best life we can live is the one in which God has the pen and God is doing the writing.  It's when we take the pen and start forcing a story that he didn't write that we miss out.

This morning, as I knelt at the altar with Nate, surrounding by our church family, asking God once again what the heck he is doing with our life, I felt like he responded with this:

"Andrea.  Have you seen the chapters of your life I've already written?  Stop dreaming small.  Don't box me in.  I've got things in store that you haven't even dreamed up.  Just trust me."

You know what?  The best stories are never the ones you know the ending to.  The best stories are the ones filled with plot twists, epic challenges, and unexpected adventures.   They are the stories where you could have never guessed the ending, but where the lead character turns out to be a lot stronger than you thought.

That's the story I hope He's writing for me.  The chapter may look blank...but I know He's got the pen. 

And I trust him.