"If we (man) can envision how something can work out, then the vision isn't God's or the vision isn't big enough. The impossible belongs to God." Coen Scholtz (I'm not sure if he was quoting this from another source.)
I sort of feel like the joke's on me, and while I would really *like* to chuckle, the lump in my throat is too big right now for that to be possible. Excited people tend to excite you. Or exhaust you. Or maybe first one and then the other LOL. Coen's inspiring thought above and Mike's enthusiasm and gung-ho "rock'n'roll baby" anecdotes can be the impetus to lift anchor and throw it in the boat and give you the push off from shore. But once you receive the push off, you're left scratching your head, looking around wondering where the sailing manual is. :)
Coen and Mike are wonderful. They open creaky old doors to shine light on long sealed old chambers of the soul and stir up the dust so that you discover old treasure maps leading to adventure. But then you are left to equip yourself with the tools to embark on that adventure. I feel like we received a few rushed words of "don't worry, x marks the spot, easy breezy, we'll keep this simple." and then they were gone. But there is no keeping it simple when you are moving a family of 8 from an established farm, to the middle of Zambia for six months and then a relocation to Italy. And especially not if you are trying to do it in three months.
It seemed like we were the only ones saying three months was impossible. Everyone else was saying, "Not at all! With God anything is possible!" We didn't like to be the ones of little faith. So we agreed to hoist sail, and give God the opportunity to "do His thing" by filling the sails and getting us there by February if He wanted to. I realize now that in my head I only agreed to this because Mike and Coen had said "We'll keep it really simple" when it came to the application process.
So yesterday I am sitting there with my head in my hands looking at a spreadsheet of 53 various "things" that need to be done when it comes to administrative steps alone to get us from here to there, some with multiple steps. And I start to feel like I am sinking. Meanwhile the "let's keep this application process simple" has rather gone out the window as I am not able to get through to anyone in OM Africa that can even give us particulars about applying, and really, we are not even sure what Coen had in mind when he said "Come to Zambia." Discipleship Training School? Missionary Training School? First one and then the other? Something else entirely? And meanwhile Coen has gone radio silent. I send up an SOS prayer, and before I even said Amen, I received an email notification. A message from the personnel guy at OM Canada offering to connect by phone.
We have been discussing not applying through OM Canada at all, since we are Italian and know the leaders of OM Italy, to just apply directly through the OM Italy office. Mike and Coen were both all gung ho to recruit us directly through OM Africa. This all seemed like it would be easy breezy and pretty painless, but in the end, neither Mike and Coen are even IN South Africa right now, and the people over there don't know us any better than the people over here.
After setting up a phone appointment for today I specifically asked for prayer that I would hear back from OM Africa prior to this call, and that we would have something "more" to go on. Well, wouldn't you know, first thing this morning I had an email in my inbox from OM Africa basically saying we HAD to apply through OM Canada or OM Italy, but could not apply directly through them. One option off the table... two left.
I started to immediately question why we had gone down the "rabbit trail" of direct application through OM Africa. How come sometimes I am so attuned to The GPS and sometimes I go meandering off on a side trail only to eventually break back through to the original trail again? I said this to God. What was with the rabbit trail God? And it was the clearest of clear trail of thoughts in my head.
"That wasn't a rabbit trail."
"Well, what was it, then?"
"It was a detour."
"What's the difference?"
"A rabbit trail is you wandering off distracted, a detour is me getting you around some obstacles to get where you need to be."
"Okay, that makes sense. But I'm not getting the obstacle?"
"You were the obstacle."
"?"
"When the water threatens to get rough, you tend to plop yourself down on the shoreline and sigh. If you would have been immobilized by the breadth of the expanse in getting from here to there you would never have hoisted sail so easily and invited me to "do my thing."
Lightbulb.
So true.
We really wouldn't have.
But here we are, anchor in, sail up and drifting... and only He can get the boat from here to there.
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