How do you describe the refreshing breeze of Hawaii? You simply relish the joyful and restful wind of transition. The last few weeks of preparation have been crazy and honestly I am not sure how we made it. The night before we left, Jenn and I were up very late packing. With only 15 minutes of sleep the night before and Jenn having surgery hours earlier, we wished it was already finished. We each had our own plan on how packing should go. Unfortunately we didn’t get each others memo. What we had was a string of firecrackers go off as we had to deal with each others exhaustion. This fresh breeze of Hawaiian air is the sigh of relief we needed from a long and trying development process in which we planned for this new season of life.
In starting our new adventure two days ago, I was struck by an expression my mother made to our son Caleb. We had taken a walk down to the beach and came to a marina that was mostly sea walls with a little beach. It was definitely designed for boats to come in and out with little wave disturbance. I attempted to put Caleb near the sandy part of the cove, so he could enjoy the water. He clung so tight against me, it was impossible to pry him away. Instead of the playing in the water, I ended up taking Caleb to the sea wall where Jenn was enjoying the marine life. Along the outer part of the sea wall were black crabs crawling around. In the water were two of the Hawaiian state fish, the Humuhumunukunukuāpua’a. And wouldn’t you know it, Caleb being all boy, just wanted to throw rocks in the water. First, he tried to pull the rocks from the sea wall. But he failed, as they were
imbedded in the concrete. So to help Caleb out, we started grabbing small rocks and piling them up on the sea wall for him to throw. 45 minutes later, he was still happily throwing rocks. He would still be there throwing rocks if we had let him, but we had to leave because we forgot his sun block and the morning haze was burning off. As Caleb finished throwing his last few rocks, my mom told him to throw just one rock in the water at a time. It was this statement that made me think about the past few months of our lives.Starting in December we had to deal with work slowing down and not having our normal income. Then we decided not to move to Oregon because the economy was worse there and I couldn’t find work. We then decided to apply for a DTS (Discipleship Training School) with YWAM (Youth with a Mission), which was a huge stretch. Then we found out Jenn was pregnant, which was a shocking surprise. We were delighted to be accepted into the PhotogenX DTS even with the impending pregnancy. During this time we had a positive feedback about joining the DTS and some very negative which included; “This is a waste of time and peoples money.” We found the difference of feedback very challenging and we had to wrestle with our emotions of fear as little money was coming in and Jenn started having some health problems related to the pregnancy. As we continued to press through this time we then found out that our precious baby did not make it and in fact Jenn was having a miscarriage; all of this in the final two weeks before we left. All of these things were obstacles that we had to face and there were many nights when we were getting ready for bed, Jenn and I would say to each other, why is everything so hard for us, as soon as we get done with one thing, something else seems to come and try us.
So as I reflected on my mom’s statement, we have been throwing our one rock at a time in the water when we have been staring at our pile of trying circumstances. With each new rock we have had to purposely decide to trust God and allow his strength and peace to rest on us. It was not always the easiest thing to do especially with the loss of our baby. There were a few memorable moments when we contemplated the thought of just quitting, but shortly thereafter, we were embraced with God’s love and given strength to press on in what we believed to be the divine direction for our lives.
We now stand looking back at our last three months from a new perspective. Looking with renewed hope, we see God as the faithful one. He promised to complete His good work in us and that is what He is doing. If we had tried to throw all of our rocks in the water at the same time, we might not be here in Hawaii. Thankfully God graced us with the ability to process each trial one at a time
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