Trusting Even When You Can’t See

I have an irrational fear of lakes. Lake water is generally murky and don’t like not being able to see what I’m jumping into. I’m not afraid of jumping. I’ll jump off the highest diving boards into the deepest pools as long as the water is clear with absolutely no hesitation. But jumping into water where you can barely see your hand in front of you—not to mention whatever lurks below—is the most horrifying thing in the world to me.

Right now, I’m jumping into lake water.

Leaps of faith are so much easier when you can see where you land! Marrying my husband in the middle of a pandemic? Sure, stressful, but I could see the bottom. I could see our future, our marriage, had a pretty good idea of the trials we’d face and the triumphs we’d tackle, and I jumped right in!

Packing up to move with no place to go? Lake water.

For those who didn’t know, we sold our house! It’s a great seller’s market right now and, after a little TLC and updating that included me painting about 75% of the outside of the house and both my husband and I gaining some new construction skills and new muscle, we were able to sell our house for a pretty good price! The bad news? It is not a buyers’ market. All the offers we made fell through.

But more good news! If everything works out, there’s hopefully a place for us to move into sometime this summer!

But more bad news! We’re closing at the end of March!

So that’s several months of homelessness.

Now obviously we’re looking at options. I know we won’t actually be homeless. But I’m packing up all our stuff and I have no idea where we’re going. I don’t know what I’ll need. Do we pack the snow clothes and put them into storage or do we try to bring that into whatever one room apartment we can find? What about toys? How many toys do I let them girls bring? And clothes? What happens with all my dishes, how can I gauge what dishes I will need over the next few months?

I have a lot of questions and very few answers. The stress is so real that my body is reacting very strongly to it and I’m losing clumps of hair every time I get into the shower.

It’s jumping into lake water! But I still have to jump. I can’t get paralysed by fear, I have to just do the next thing. When God says go, we go… even if we don’t know where we’re going. How many other people did God call to be sojourners and strangers? How many of God’s people had to do some wandering before the promised land?

Following when you can see the end is easy. Following when it’s all about trust is hard. But I trust God. I know that He will always provide for us what we need and when we need it.

In the meantime… How much of the girls’ clothes do I pack away and how much do I put in suitcases? They have a lot of clothes…