If You Ask Me... And, Of Course, You Didn't.

Almost three years ago, our entire world seemed to be crumbling around us. We gave up our dream of Ghana after six years of fundraising while working full time and going to seminary full time, visiting 53 churches and finding very few supporters, and all the while watching our monthly support requirements double. We quietly left our sending church being called liars and divisive for asking questions of our leadership. I you didn't know, church splits are ghastly. My health was rapidly failing from all the stress, I baffled multiple doctors and we thought I wouldn't be around much longer. We resigned from our mission and weeks later our beloved mission was caught in a child sex abuse scandal that even to this day I don't feel was resolved gracefully. We lost most of our community by walking away from our church and mission; and to top it off we had terrible neighbors who made daily life miserable. The positives? Brandon's fantastic job, our beautiful boys, a beautiful house. The week after we resigned from our mission, I received a diagnosis of POTS after more than a decade of struggle. And salt and gatorade would save my life. We were stuck in a town we did not like, with no reason to stick around. The goal had always been to move to Ghana anyway, so Salem was just a stopping point to us. We made a list of specific things we wanted in a new job and home. First, every specific on the job list was provided. And so we moved and started our fresh life in Boise, Idaho. The land with over 300 days of sunshine a year, though that's proving to be wrong this year.

Of course, nothing is easy about moving out of state and selling a house in a depressed market. Our house took a while to sell and so the boys and I moved back and forth between OR, WA, and ID seven times between May and August. It did come under contract a day before the house we purchased with all the specifics of our list, came available for us to put in an offer. Perfect timing or at least just in time. We sold our house for $30k below assessed value and paid top dollar for our Boise house. That's never pleasant. 

And so I saw this as our clean slate. Our time to establish our life by our own rules and values and expectations. No longer would we have a life that was ruled, regulated (yes, we signed a code of conduct contract), and judged by others; and full of negativity by never being able to please any party no matter how hard we worked.  I built up walls around our precious new life to protect ourselves from further damage and to keep the good that was left, just ours. A new life would be rebuilt. Hope remained. He who promises good will deliver. 
We grieved our loss for two years before we were able to throw it off of us and move forward with strength and happiness.  

"At any given moment you have the power to say: this is not how the 

story is going to end."

Wrestling with God, I had to reshape my thinking of what was pleasing to Him. Heavy analysis of everything I thought I knew began. My worldview lens needed cleaning from all the dirt that had been thrown at me. How had my church culture soiled my lens of seeing like Jesus and my worth in His eyes? All the fighting over power, rightness over righteousness, lying, pettiness and negativity had tarnished my trust in leadership and humanity and I was angry about it. I knew I needed to cut all of that out of my life. It wasn't coming from my family so that's who was allowed in the walls. Everyone else, please wait outside while I evaluate if you are trustworthy. 

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the 

old, but on building the new." Socrates

And so began my new world mission. At least for my family. Cut all negativity out of life. Well, all that I can control, that is. Everything gets analyzed under the microscope. 

"Old ways won't open new doors." 

Does this promote my mission of a positive family life or go against my mission? 
Is something upsetting the balance of life? 
Can you do something about it? 
If you do nothing, will the result be positive? 
If negative, do something about it. Change it. Cut it out. 
Not quite the right change? Tweak it until it's balanced.
And if it promotes the mission, focus on it, keep it, and breathe life into it. 

Keep it simple.

Negativity is not welcome here.