Trust and Real Estate - Part 2

I wrote earlier about the lessons learned thus far from the difficulties in selling our home. I was struck, as I just reread those words how all of the lessons learned up until that posting have continued to be my education from that day until the present. And I guess they will continue from here, as well.

However, since it has been a few months, I thought I would post an update regarding our progress, and maybe some "thought nuggets" from it.

We still have our home on the market, and a couple weeks ago, came finally to the decision point that we were going to further lower our home price, which means delaying our departure to Kenya a bit, so that we can work some locum tenens (physician temp work) to raise capital to pay back the mortgage. (I won't delve into the reasons behind this decision. Suffice to say that Plan A did not happen, and we're doing some adjusting.)

So, for the months of October and November, I will be a staff physician at an urgent care in Gallup, New Mexico, for an Indian Health Service Navajo facility. It is an opportunity to serve a needy population and work in cross-cultural settings, but still not where we want to be. Then, in early December, we will be the last of the McCropder families to arrive in Kenya.

A few thoughts:

1. This process has reminded me of a comment regarding a passage of John's Gospel: "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes." (3:8) The comment was that we often think of this as a metaphor for the Holy Spirit, but the following verse corrects this: "So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." It's a metaphor for us, instead.

I've felt a lot like this recently, living each day unsure of where we'll be and when, living to wake up and find the manna on the ground. Before landing in New Mexico, I thought we were headed to Alaska, Maine, Arizona, Montana, South Dakota, and Michigan. It's a wild ride, and it refreshes my spirit, while it stresses my flesh.

2. This process brings up the question: What do I do with this unwelcome turn of events in my life? The Christian discussion of this is incomplete without mentioning that we can trust that God is working his will, even when we don't see it. We are little children, or even less intelligently, little sheep, and he is wiser, and knows what is going on.

Can I know this? Or will it always require faith to say that this is true? Yes, it does require faith. On the flip side, to assert that God isn't working out his good (and even best) plans through these unwelcome circumstances is equally a statement that requires faith, since the truth of the situation requires a knowledge of all ends of a scenario, which is not, and likely never will be, available to us in total.

Thus, this unwelcome scenario has me asking the same questions (although I ask them on a smaller scale) that my patients ask when they get sick. Uncertainty. Change of plans. And a need for faith, if one is to continue to believe that God is at work. Valuable lessons, I admit.