Counting down the days.

"God isn't looking for people of great faith, but for individuals ready to follow Him" — Hudson Taylor



It has been such a long journey, one that sometimes seemed as if it would never end, & now it is a matter of weeks, even days.  A great wrenching is taking place, not always terribly comfortably.  These are the days of final things.  Yes there are bags to be packed & boxes to be stowed away, good~byes to be said but more than that these are irrevocably Liddy's final days as a child. 

Technically, of course, she has been an adult for several years, but numbers on a calendar mean very little in reality ~ & nothing at all within the context of family.  Liddy retains her place as the oldest daughter ~ & for many years she was the only daughter as well as the youngest child, a place she ceded very reluctantly to her little sister & only on the firm understanding that she was the perfect daughter.  How we all wish!

Two years is not, of course, all that long & it will go quickly, but oh, how much will change!  When Liddy returns she will, most definitely, be a woman in her own right & her little sister will be an adult [tremble, oh ye hordes!] & ready to take on the world.  There are links that must be broken & once broken they can never be regained.  We will lose the daily ebb & flow of each other's lives & our life paths will diverge more & more with each passing year.  This is right & proper but the transitioning where none of us are quite one thing or the other makes for a bumpy ride.

All too often it is in the daily grind we fail as Christians.  Tempers fray.  We know each other too well & forget kindness is the oil that smooths our way.  And yet day by day the Lord is providing small miracles. 

   In the beginning, many moons ago now, there were people, mostly Christians, mostly missionaries, who kept saying, Liddy would never be a missionary; she wasn't cut out for it.  They saw her sweetness but not her strength.  They saw her pliability but not the core of steel. It hurt.  Liddy was sure of her calling & having gone to the Lord & enquired of Him, I also was sure of her calling.  The call was gradually confirmed again & again but still the path bent & twisted like a crooked stick & Liddy was tempted to despair, to give up, to choose another life direction, but that is easier said than done when the Lord's hand is upon your life.

There were the false starts & the shuddering halts, the elations & crushing disappointments & even as Liddy was once again given the go ahead to prepare for Chile, missionaries yet again were those who most strongly opposed her: she was unskilled; she was theologically untrained; she didn't speak the language ~ & she was unfunded.

I am not always the most gracious of people & I got pretty impatient with all the hoo~ha~ing because in my mind it was very simple;  Go ask God.  Listen to what He has to say & then come tell me He hasn't called Liddy because if this is not right, believe me, the Lord will bring it to a crashing halt ~ & this time He has not.  Bumpy, yes, but all He has really asked is that Liddy trust Him.  Liddy, unlike her mama, is a planner.  Waiting for her funds to dribble in while watching the clock count down the minutes till the cut off point was nerve shattering.  Again, with just days to go to raise the funds to pay for the GO conference, which will go a long way towards helping orientate Lid in her new surroundings, 2 large gifts promptly took care of her needs.  She has been able to procure a cheap but good camera so she can keep us all up to speed with her new life & the money is still coming ~ & how like the Lord who has promised that our riches will be pressed down & overflowing.  While most missionaries are underfunded Liddy is at 100% ~ & she was starting to worry she would be overfunded.  I do not see it that way.  The Lord, who knows all things, knows her need beforehand & is ensuring she has funds in place to meet those needs.

I know many of you have been following along & if I can ever figure out how to get Lid's newsletter out of my computer I will post to the Chile wall.  There are plenty of prayer points I should probably mention ~ but won't.  Only one matters: that in these final days we will be a blessing to each other & Liddy will leave for Chile fortified & strengthened in her family's love for her.