There’s a tug-of-war going on in my mind.  A constant wondering if doors closed and lines drawn and brick walls, and everything hard and uncertain and barren mean God’s telling us to move on, or if they mean God’s testing our mettle, wanting us to stay and fight.  We had wanted for years to move back here, because for reasons that may have partly been sound, but also partly idealistic, here is where we thought we could best serve God and best raise our children to serve Him, too.

Eventually, God worked it out so that we could come.  I say God worked it out, because the timing and circumstances of this door opening was more than we could have orchestrated.  Since coming, though?  It has been nothing short of completely disheartening on almost every level.  It has been a battle from day one, in which every dream, every hope, every idea we had of how life might look has been obliterated.  Not changed, not replaced, but just destroyed with nothing left in the void but tatters of the life we thought we could have, thought we would have.  It has been heartbreaking.

Despite all the deep disappointment, though, we have been learning and growing.  These difficult days have, in some ways, been a refining process.  There have been areas of winnowing and areas of strengthening…and lots of areas of just learning how weak and incapable we really are.  We have questioned our motives, questioned our methods, questioned our personalities, and questioned our faith over and over and over again.   We haven’t often found answers.

Now, there’s this crossroads…maybe.  In truth, there is nothing to make us stay, except perhaps for the logistical nightmare of moving and the fear of the unknown.  No ties, no connections, no responsibilities, no ministry, no anything that would suffer if we were gone.  And there’s nobody telling us they want us to stay.  Not a single person.  So, what are we supposed to think?  That coming here was just a monumental mistake, and now God is trying to make that crystal clear?  Or that, somehow, in spite of all appearances, there’s a reason to stay, to persist, to find a way?

At this point, I feel like we lose either way.