Monday 16 April 2012

About leaping

In case anyone ever reads this other than my husband, I wanted to explain the title of my blog.

I'm a very cautious person. Tell me a plan and I'll tell you the ways that it might go wrong. Call it pessimism or call it realism, I'm always thinking in terms of worst case scenarios. It is not my best quality. Just ask my husband and he'll tell you that I've squashed his enthusiasm on a number of occasions.

On the other hand, my mom made a comment a while ago about how I always do things the hard way. Looking back on my short life I find that this is true. I'm always doing things that from most people's perspectives don't quite make sense. I chose to go to the high school that was further away, where none of my friends were going. I chose to go to a university that was even further away and that none of my friends (or relatives, or acquaintances, or anyone for that matter) had even heard of. And my husband and I got engaged when I was 21, with a year of university left, no money and no job prospects. And just lately my husband and I decided that he should quit his stable job and we should move before he even had another job lined up. How does a cautious, careful person like myself come to make these decisions?

I can only say that God made me. Every time I was afraid. Every time I spent sleepless nights worrying. I wondered how I would make new friends, how I would deal with living so far away from my family. I job and apartment hunted, I made budgets in a frantic effort to figure out how we would survive. And every single time things worked out better than I ever would have thought. God keeps asking me to take these leaps that go against every grain in my body, and when I say yes His work in my life is astounding.

The high school that I chose gave me a great education and friends with whom I managed to stay out of trouble and have the time of my life. My university experience truly changed my life, made me a better person, and there I met the people who are still my best friends, and the love of my life, my husband. Our marriage has been a blessing and, though we don't have a lot of money, my husband has always been employed and we've always had everything we need for ourselves and our son. And the very day that my husband quit his current job he got an offer for another job that he really wanted. I am profoundly grateful that God has given me the grace to make these leaps that have so shaped my life.

So we are in the midst of our latest leap right now. My husband has one more week of work at his current job and we move at the end of the month. I'm excited and nervous. I've given up making budgets for now. I'm sure moving and settling in will cost more than I ever would have expected anyway. Gradually I am learning to just let go and trust. My husband, the incurable optimist, is helping me.