To Settle

To Settle: to take up residence and become established / to become settled or established and stable in one's residence or lifestyle.

When I look back in my life, it has always been very important for me to be settled. Even as a child, I would look for 'hideouts' or personal areas for which I could make my own. My favorite book was one about an orphan named Mandy who found an abandoned cottage that became her own cared-for place. I read it over and over again. I cherished my own place, privacy, and stability. Later on in life, I would always fix my room just-so. My college years, whenever I had to move out whether it be moving from a dorm to an apartment or moving out for the summer, I struggled with the moving process. I craved stability in a place. I craved settlement. Perhaps I despised the feeling of not having control over that part of my life.

I think it's interesting that after 9 months of being in one town after our wedding, Ben and I spent the last year of marriage unsettled. In some form or another we've lived out of our suitcases and boxes for the past year. India for 6 months, several months with Ben’s family, and two months with a friend's family where we are now. As we are getting ready to move into our new apartment in a week, I'm thinking about the upcoming 'settlement' while reflecting on the past year.

I'm not sure exactly what God had in store for us during this unsettled process. We have been blessed in so many ways, by being able to spend time with family, by having wonderful friends to stay with here.... but it has still been difficult. Difficult dealing with my innate desire to have more stability in my environment. To not have to deal with so much change. I think I have handled the adjustment 'ok', I haven't broken down in tears or anything, but I have withdrawn socially a lot during the last 6 months. Haven't felt quite like myself. Maybe some of that is adjusting from India, as well.

Instead of rambling on without meaning, I'll leave you with this. Our security isn't found in a place. It's not found in consistency, in environmental stability, in routine. As much as we would like to create this for ourselves, and how we often try to, we cannot control our life by controlling our material surroundings. God has allowed me to experience this in an in-your-face way this year. Our only true settlement is found in God. He is our dwelling place.

I once heard Rolland Baker, a missionary in Africa, say that he could be in a mud hut in Mozambique or a hotel in England, and he would be at home.

He could enter into his place of familiarity and comfort wherever he was. Because his home was not a physical place, it was the heart of God. For as children of God, we are citizens not of this world, but of heaven. I guess I’m thankful for learning a small piece of this lesson.


"God, it seems you've been our home forever;

long before the mountains were born.. "

(Psalm 90:1, The Message)

Long-past-due

I've realized how bad I've been about letting everyone know what is going on. So here goes. We are moving this Friday.

I (Lisa) am starting a counseling position at a hospital. They haven't really figured out the title since it goes back and forth between Behavior Specialist and Behavioral Health Counselor. Either way, it's working with behavior (in case you couldn't tell)- assessments, counseling, treatment plans, and the like. I will have a caseload with people with severe, persistant mental illness and/or addiction. Wow, this job is a HUGE blessing and came at just the right time (before I accepted a less-ideal job). My training starts Monday and will be ONE MONTH- can you believe it? One month of training.

Ben is starting PA school on May 17 (2.5 years). For the time being we'll be staying with a friend's extremely gracious parents (thank you Stones!) with a cute terrier and a talking parrot, until we can move into an apartment. We've been in such transition that it will be really nice to finally be settled once we are able to move for good. Hopefully this will happen before Ben starts school because his program will be really demanding. People have told us it's even more time-consuming than medical school because you are condensing similar material into 2 years instead of 3. So we will definitley need a lot of grace during this season of our lives. Lots of movement, transition, waiting, and new things. It feels really overwhelming sometimes, especially with not having access to a permanent place to live and moving around 3 times in 5 months!, but we're taking one day at a time (Ben is much better at this than I am), and we really are thankful for the opportunities given... and for both the our family's and the Stones allowing us to stay with them for different periods. Right now Ben has to finish 3 medical textbooks before school even starts! Grace and lots of it...

Love

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
if I lack'd anything.

A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:
Love said, "you shall be he".
I the unkind, ungrateful: Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
My dear, then I will serve.

"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meal."
So I did sit and eat.

-George Herbert, 1593-1632

Inspiring Book

I want to make a book recommendation. When Ben and I were in London on route back to India, we stayed with a pastor and his wife, the Halls. Kathy gave us this book she had just finished reading, about an Indian Sikh who, in search of finding his religion's coveted level of peace and truth, was minutes away from committing suicide unless the true God revealed himself. What he experienced next was something he never expected, a dramatic encounter with Jesus Christ similar to Saul on the Damascus road. A changed man, he forsook his family and all that he knew and committed his life to traveling the Asian hills to share the gospel with his people. His biography is one of the best I've read, simple and humble yet thoroughly inspiring.

While the book is a biography and the author, Phyllis Thompson, follows his journey in a simple, succint writing style, she precedes each chapter with a tidbit from one of Singh's own writings. I wanted to share the one I read today:

A Man Must Worship

"You will hardly find men who do not worship God or some power. If atheistic thinkers or scientists, filled with the materialistic outlook, do not worship God, they often tend to worship great men and heroes or some ideal which they have exalted into a Power. Buddha did not teach anything about God. The result was, his follwers began to worship him. In China the people began to worship ancestors, as they were not taught to worship. This desire for worship, from which man cannot get away, has been created in him by his Creator, so that led by this desire, he may have communion with his Creator." -Sundar Singh, Reality and Religion

Diary of a Job-seeker

I haven't written anything in a while and it's partly because I haven't had anything to write. Well, anything exciting that is. I guess I can share a little bit about the only thing going on in my life right now... finding a job.

Ben and I are moving because he's starting Physician Assistant school in May. So I am looking for a job in the area. It is somewhat complicated since we haven't relocated yet. Here's a little bit about my experience thus far:

To start off, since my degree is in school counseling you would think that's where I would look first. However, what I did not realize when I went into this once-booming field was that a recession was coming and two years later upon my graduation, school counselors would be laid off and counties would be under hiring freezes. Plus, mid-year is not the best time to find a job in the school system. So other options must be considered.

I first started looking (where else?) online. That seems to be the most reasonable plan when you are looking for a job in another area. I found a lot of options and was super excited. After submitting my resume, cover letters, etc. I started to receive reply emails telling me that I needed to get my "credit checked" for "company credit-card security." Suspicious. Long story short, I realized there are a LOT of people trying to scam job seekers right now. Luckily I didn't fall for anything... but I did waste some serious time. And suffered some serious discouragement.

So I decided to try other avenues... things I have experience in and enjoy like college student affairs or academics, other counseling or interventionist work, or administrative jobs. What I kept running into was that I'm either over-qualified for entry-level jobs because I have a Master's degree, or under-qualified for higher positions because I don't have over 3 years of full-time experience. What's a girl to do? I happen to think I am quite a qualified person... but does the rest of the world think that?

It doesn't help that the news and internet constantly bombard you with how impossible it is to find a job right now... how there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of applications for each opening... how the average person takes over 5 months to find a job...(doom and gloom anyone?)

Purposefully ignoring the statistics, Ben and I stopped by a few places to get some info. The current status is that I'm checking websites of specific places I could work: one of the several university or colleges in the area, a military base, and of course the school board websites, just in case. Who knows?

Anyway, I started to get really stressed out when I didn't find a job in like 2 weeks. But my level-headed other-half sat me down for a good talk. He pointed out how I like to have control of things. True. How I like to have a plan. True. How I like to know right NOW what is next. True. How God doesn't always work that way. True. How sometimes he makes us wait. True. He then reminded me of his trip to the Amazon last year, and how he didn't have the money to go but felt like God had called him to it. 48-hours before trip, packed up but with no plane tickets, my faith-filled self said, "Ben do you really think God will come through?" He responded, "Yes. And if he does provide the money and tickets, will you ever doubt that he will provide for us in the future?" "No," I promised. "Not if he does a miracle like that". Which of course, he did. Ben was on the plane 48 hours later. And to add to it, God provided all the money we needed for our 6 months in India without us raising funds. Because we knew he wanted us there. Because he's a good God. He provides for his children when they are seeking to obey him whole-heartedly.

It's funny how easy and quickly we forget what he's done in the past. How we fail to trust him in the present. After Ben and I prayed about the job-search thing, I found a new sense of peace. It will work out. If it doesn't, God must have other plans. Either way, he is good and he provides exactly what his children need, for "no good thing does he withhold".

Wish me happy job-hunting!