Tripping Over Typeset

Hello friends,

I keep hearing this collective sigh across my feeds of “Aahhh… I think Spring is coming!” And I am right there with you!

For the last few days the sun has been shining here, snow is melting away and even my daffodils are poking their heads out in belief that better days are on their way.

This last year has for sure been a tough one and together we have experienced quite a TIME! This week marks the year anniversary of ‘shutting down to flatten the curve.’ And here we are. A year ago, two of our kids packed up their dorm room in a tearful hurry, said goodbye to their campus and hoped for a return. They wished for graduation with friends, a chance to hug, have fun and celebrate an amazing season of college years ending. Yet their undergrad years were cut short and over.

My hubby, Dave, is an early adopter. If you don’t know what that means I’ll give you a quick summation. In the midst of oncoming change or a new adventure, people are presented with the change, idea, or adventure. Early adopters, jump right in, assess the situation, and begin the task of taking the hill. For Dave, he told our family, church and ministry. “This is going to change us more than we can imagine and last longer then we think.” And here we are.

It reminds me of the story of Sarah in Genesis 18. Three angels visit Abraham and Sarah. They tell Abraham, “A year from now we will return and your wife will have a son.” Sarah thought they were crazy because she was well past the child-bearing years and that possibility seemed ludicrous and impossible. She laughed at their prophetic words. Yet a year later there she sat with her baby son. Everything had happened as they foretold.

And here we are… a year later. The way we lived, interacted and went about our days then is now over. What we imagined as a quick, mere two weeks has changed our world dramatically. This was a season we weren’t expecting. A season lasting much longer than any of us imagined. A season filled with lots of uncertainty and speculation. Many times this year I sat with dropped jaw shaking my head. I mean where does all this craziness come from? (Don’t answer that… it’s just a long rambling rabbit hole I’m not traveling down.)

Instead, let’s look up and soak in sun!

As we find ourselves at this year anniversary, let’s reflect on good things that have come from this time.

• Enjoying unexpected family time with kids home.
• Renovating and working on home projects because where would we go anyways? We might as well improve the place we’re spending extra time.
• Expanding horizons, learning new strategies, and finding out we can do more than we thought we could.

Have you ever had those goals in your life that one day you would get to but other things came up and achieving that goal was put off until another time?

Many of my friends in ministry had goals of livestreaming and recording services. We even had a goal of adding a second service. The checklist to achieve those things was slow in getting done and we planned for those things further down the line. But then shutdown happened and we scrambled. Many of us scoured the internet for video equipment and livestreaming capabilities. We adjusted and became familiar with talking to cameras rather than the crowd normally sitting in our congregations.

We learned we could make pretty big swings when needed. Change forced us to create environments of breaking or bending. We became flexible and creative. We worked hard to connect with others in new, unfamiliar ways. We’ve survived, and in some ways, even thrived.

So in these days of looking back and now moving forward, maybe you laughed and thought, That’s impossible, yet God has brought new life in ways you hadn’t expected.

In this season,

• What unexpected thing have you learned?
• How have you grown as a person of faith?
• What gift came your way that a year ago you wouldn’t have believed, yet now you hold it dear?

A time span of a year changes us. Those days from last year seem in many ways like a lifetime ago. Yet is anything too difficult for our God? (Gen 18:14) He is still working, still creating, and still moving through us and for us.

Let’s keep looking forward to days ahead where the sun is shining and spring pops through.

~Rachel

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