Not Yet

I’m not much for parenting articles.  I’m never going to be the girl on the beach scanning magazine articles with titles like "Getting your Child to Listen in 5 Easy Steps"– mostly because I know that if I sit down for two seconds Daniel will be diving head first alone into the waves while Joshua eats sand and Abigail tries to make her way back to the house.  And that’s not really an exaggeration.  But I’m also kind of an old school, all they need to do is play outside, do what’s best for mama kind of mom.  In full disclosure, I let Joshua eat the sand.

Somehow last month, though, I came across an article in a local magazine I enjoy about a teacher who was employing a strategy with her young students she called “not yet.”  When they told her they couldn’t do something or became frustrated with a task, she was quick to remind them that it wasn’t that they couldn’t do it.  Instead, it was that they couldn’t do it yet.  That concept has stuck with me this month, and I think there is something more to it for me than just a new parenting technique.

Last week, Andy found out that he has a job with the new bank that is being formed from the BB&T and Suntrust merger but that the new job will be in Charlotte.  I think my last blog made it clear how hard that news was for me to hear.  In my mind, I thought we were going to be able to stay – if not forever, at least for a little while.  Instead, we were told we have to be in Charlotte by January.

There are a million things that make leaving Clemmons hard for me.  I could list them but the bottom line is that this place feels more like home than any other place I’ve ever lived.  In only 5 years, we have been blessed with the type of community some people never find.  The years we have lived here have definitely been the happiest, most purposeful years of my life.  God has grown us individually and as a couple in beautiful, remarkable ways, and I have seen his hand powerfully beginning with promises he made to us about this place before we even moved here.  Heartbroken doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings about listing a house I love in a community I adore to move back to the city we came from.

But today, in my quiet time, I felt the Lord whispering hope to my “Lord, I just can’ts.”  Lord, I just can’t leave my friends.  Lord, I can’t leave my house.  Lord, I can’t leave my small group, my church, our gym, our school/preschool, ect.  I felt him reminding me, “You can’t do it yet.”  The first verse anyone sent me when this news broke last week was from our pastor’s wife and dear friend, Beth.  The scripture says, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name and you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isaiah 43:1-2). 

It would be so much more enjoyable for me if the Lord would take all the challenges away and make a way for us to stay.  But that isn’t what he’s promised in this situation.  And that wasn’t what he promised in Isaiah.  The waters and rivers and fires would still be there, and the people would still have to walk through every single one of them.  He didn’t promise that he would take them away, but he did promise that he would go with them and that those big, scary, realistically dangerous things would have no effect on the people.  They would be protected.

Andy and another close friend have both reminded me more than once to take this journey one day at a time.  My friend Marianne put it, “Make only the decisions that need to be made today, praying for clarity and trusting God with the decisions for tomorrow.”  The Lord has promised to go with me and yes, there are some things I can’t do right now, but he also isn’t asking me to do them today, and he is promising, “You can’t do them yet… but when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”