Looking behind and praying ahead

Last week I was at a board meeting and one of the discussions that we had provoked some anxiety and prayer… anxiety about the uncertainty of what’s ahead and prayer to counteract the anxiety! As I’ve pondered and prayed these last few days I’ve been reminding myself of how the Lord brought us here to England. He made it so clear that He was bringing us here that we have had confidence and certainty even in shaky times, that this is exactly where we are meant to be. So I’m going to share (to have a written reminder in one place, as well as to wonder at God’s awesome ways) the story of how we came to be in England. I even found my old journals to more accurately record dates!

August 7, 2017 – Orlando – I wrote in my journal: “The sense that we are going to be moving has been with me for a few months now and is increasing. I felt in prayer the other day that You said to ‘start packing’ in response to my question, “How can I be more active in faith in this season?””
The same day I also wrote that there were two other things that played into the sense that we’re going to be moving – both involving the response of silence from the Lord in response to two questions we were asking – 1) whether Abigail should start VPK (pre-school) and 2) where Ruth was going to go (room-wise) when she arrived.

December 28, 2017 (A little less than 6 weeks after Ruth was born) – Orlando – from my journal: “I’ve felt You speaking to continue packing and not let that fall by the wayside – You are going to move us. I believe Lord! At times I’ve lost hope in the waiting but there is a renewed sense that the move is coming and You want us ready.”

I have to say that when I first heard the Lord say to start packing and had the sense that we would be moving, I was fully convinced that it would be within commuting distance of Focal Point Church (FPC) – the church we were part of, serving at and had our lives very much invested and intertwined in… so in the first 6 months or so of packing, although we had no idea where we were going, we had the mindset that it wasn’t going to be too far away.

I think it was right around Christmas time that I went to the small Walmart not far from our house to pick up some groceries. I came out and found a small, green scrap of paper tucked under our windscreen wiper. It seemed like a really random collection of ‘Bible study verses’, but nothing in God’s kingdom is random! To be honest, we were really busy with four girls under four and though we kept the paper safe, it wasn’t until days later, maybe even a week, that we actually sat in bed and read through the scriptures listed. As we took turns reading them I began to cry as the Lord stirred in my heart a vision of something much bigger than I could comprehend. I couldn’t really grasp it or put words to it, but I just knew that hope for more was being restored. The season of waiting had been hard (and it was barely even half done at that point!)

To give a little context, William hadn’t been working since taking a sabbatical at the beginning of 2017 (following a couple of years project managing the building of FPC’s new church building) and we felt the need to contend for the ‘more’ – to be doing what we were created to do – and for every job option that had come up post-sabbatical we had sensed an immediate ‘no’. The Lord provided for us in amazing ways and we had no lack during the season of waiting, but it was such a challenging time saying no to many things but having no idea what the yes would be or when it would come!

At the beginning of March 2018 our dear Brazilian friend Helaine came to us with something she felt the Lord was saying. I remember standing in our kitchen having the conversation with her, and William and I both thinking, ‘No!’. I’m pretty sure I cried! (Even though we both had an internal ‘no’, it wasn’t ‘no’ to the Lord – both of us had immediate thoughts about Katherine – she had so many medical issues going on at the time that our ‘no’ was born out of thoughts surrounding moving with such medical needs). I found a text message she sent us on 3 March 2018 in which she summarized what she felt God was saying, so that we had it in writing too.

We continued to seek amidst a few months of great turmoil and struggle. In the summer we headed out on a road trip, destined to visit William’s parents & family in upstate New York. Somewhere in Georgia or Tennessee I received a message from a friend in England, who, in her message, told us that she had been prompted a few weeks before (unbeknownst to us) to ask friends of hers whether there was a possibility we could come and stay in their guest house for a few weeks to pray and seek the Lord. She had received word that they had said yes so was contacting us to propose that we have a trip to the UK! Within a few hours of that message William received a call from our senior pastor asking whether he would want to be considered for an associate pastor role at a church in England that FPC had affiliation with! It was the first offer that we didn’t sense an immediate ‘no’ to… and the fact that these two calls came so close together stirred us to wondering what God was up to (and to deeper surrender of our wills, thoughts, plans, ideas!)

After a wonderful trip visiting family and exploring more of the US, we headed back to Orlando and prayed earnestly that God would show us if we were to go to England. As we prayed we began to research some of the practicalities of a potential move to England – and just in looking at visas were overwhelmed at the cost that it would entail. After a day looking at costs we gathered with the girls to cry out to the Lord as cost seemed so prohibitive – we cried out that if He was indeed sending us, He would have to make a way and open the door for us. The very next day we received word from English friends who were visiting California and had been at a church the day before where they had shared communion in small groups. At the end of the service a couple who had been in their small group gave them $500 as a ‘sign of blessing of the relationship between the US & UK’. Our friends said they knew the money wasn’t for them, so went back to their hotel and prayed together as a family and felt it was for us. So the day after crying out to the Lord we were told of this $500 coming our way from someone we’d never met on the other side of the USA!! And awesomely, the friends from England were from the very church that William had had the offer of being considered for the associate pastor position for – but they had NO IDEA that this was in the works, that we had any thought of moving to England, or that we had been crying out to the Lord to make a way for the finances if He was moving us there!! It was yet another clear sign for us.

Packing had been ongoing over the months and the wall of boxes grew and grew! As the next step towards a possible move to England, we took up the offer of visiting for a month – the door was wide open and God provided EVERYTHING we needed – flights, transport in England and the most beautiful accommodation in glorious Yorkshire! He even blessed us with phenomenal weather – we were there late September to late October and it rained only 2 days and was sunny a fair bit of the time! It was an incredible time of refreshment and witnessing God’s provision. The place we stayed even had its own playground (complete with zipwire) and llamas!! The photos below give a glimpse of our month there.

Through our month in England, which included William going for an interview at the church, it became clearer that we were going to be moving here. Knowing our struggle regarding Katherine’s health, one of the things that the Lord had spoken to us was that He would take care of her and go before us to provide what we needed. Katherine had been g-tube fed for 3 years – since she was 6 months old – and though she was eating a little by mouth she didn’t get much chance to get really hungry because of the tube feeds. During a diaper (nappy) change one evening, half way through our trip, Ruth (aged 10.5 months) managed to grab hold of her tube and rip it & the button right out of her stomach. I hadn’t brought a spare button with us and as we were 45 minutes or so from the nearest hospital we prayed and decided there and then that we were done with the g-tube. We never looked back and it was another thing the Lord took care of (in an unexpected way!) ahead of moving. Incidentally, she’s now a great eater!

Back in the US the next 3 months were hectic with packing and preparations. Even though we had been packing gradually over the previous 18 months (and boy were we thankful that we had been!) there was much to do. Graciously, mercifully, God provided for us in another amazing way: A year or so before, I had been doing laundry – I remember exactly where I was standing when a thought dropped into my mind – a thought about a friend’s daughter coming out from England to help us. At the time I wasn’t sure how old she was, whether or not she’d finished school or what she was doing, but after some correspondence with her mum, some time and much prayer, Grace ended up coming out to stay with us (in her gap year) for our last 2 months before moving. Oh, what a gift, what timing and what provision it was for us! She was fantastic with the girls and a tremendous blessing amidst the stress and strain of preparing to move abroad.

Just before Christmas the girls got their British passports… gratefully, each entitled to British citizenship because I was born here. William was able to enter the UK and apply for a visa once here. Our crate of boxes was picked up a couple of weeks before we left, off on it’s journey to England by sea. We were blessed to be prayed over by our church before being sent off. Our leaving was delayed by the sudden death of William’s mom, but gratefully William was still in the US and able to get up to say goodbye and be with his Dad and siblings. Whilst he was gone, even with the extra, unexpected week, packing continued until the last minute and we left piles of bits and pieces that friends kindly dealt with after we left!

The Lord had been building our faith over the months and months of waiting – though at times we felt such lack in our faith – and we left America knowing for sure that God was going with us and before us. In fact, we left not knowing where we would be living or even staying the first night, but with the assurance that God knew and would provide. So when we arrived at the airport and were met by the senior pastor of the church here and he asked us where he was to take us to, we laughed nervously and said, “Let’s pray.” So pray we did and the Lord opened the door for us to stay at an Operation Mobilization guest house in Bromley for a few weeks until He miraculously provided a 4-bedroom detached house for us, in which we lived for the next 10 months.

Much has happened in the 3 years since we’ve been in England and we’ve continued to pray about our future and to seek God for the plans He has for us. William is in the process of extending his visa for another year as the church asked him to stay one more year – that will take us until March 2023. Beyond that we don’t have any idea where in the world we will be! Thankfully God does and He has good plans for us, so the battle is for our trust to be fully in Him in the waiting and uncertainty, reminding ourselves that thus far He has been faithful, has led us and made the path clear to us, and He can do it again too.