The Great Unknown

Adam's residency graduation program was held on Saturday.  It is only fitting to update this blog as we transition into our next season since I wrote my first blog entry while driving up to Pennsylvania for Adam to begin medical school back in 2007.   At the graduation ceremony, I sat there and realized how quickly these years have marched by us.  Say what you will about graduation or any traditional rite-of-passage ceremony, but they do cause you to sit and reflect on what you've done, where you've failed, what you stand for, what you believe in, and what you will leave behind.

We feel like different people than those punk kids driving 23 hours with a u-haul and a dog.  We were naively moving into a charming english cottage with 80-year-old, single pane windows and no garage in a city with 150+ inches of lake effect snow per year.  But, mostly, I look back and see the kindness of God through the seasons of being overwhelmed, through moments of comparison, through times of sorrow and pain, through pity parties, through seasons of zeal and seasons of apathy, through the mundane moments and through the tears of celebration and exhaustion.  He was there and He was good and He never withheld love from us.

I have dreamt of and put so much hope into this next season: having Adam home more often, paying off student loans, going on a family vacation, at some point.  But I already feel the need and conviction to hold my expectations loosely.  I've already seen that this year will not look the way I had always planned but it can look better.  The same daily fixing my eyes on Jesus is needed lest I despair, lest I have a pity party, lest I forget my purpose on this planet, lest I become a slave to my comfort.

I look towards this next year knowing that God is stirring our hearts and asking obedience from us in ways that were not our plans.  Yet I know that His ways are always better than ours, his thoughts far above our own.  The things I look to for satisfaction always run dry and leave me weary.  His burden is easy.  His yoke is light.  Here's to the next adventure.