6 months.

Our container of furniture finally arrived on our doorstep yesterday, six months to the day of being back in the U.S. We’ve been back for six months, and that’s a thought I can’t quite wrap my mind around.  Six months?  That’s half a year.  That’s a third of the time we spent overseas.

If you’d told us this summer when we found out we couldn’t return to South Asia, that by the beginning of December we wouldn’t yet have our next ministry position, we’d be horrified.  But now it’s upon us and, while not easy, it’s not the horrible prospect we’d feared.

It takes time.  Time to start over, to find a new calling.  And things have been fairly quiet on the blog on that front because, let’s face it, with most any new job, there’s a process of conversations and applications and sometimes one or both parties discover along the way that it’s not quite the right fit.

But I will say that during this process, something has become clearer and clearer with each week, with each possibility considered, and it’s this: God is leading David and me together.  In fact, I’m certain that in our whole marriage we’ve never been as unified about our calling as we are right at this moment.  And with the dozens of ministry options we’ve prayed through, with the stark differences in our personalities and even in our gifting, with the countless arguments that have followed us through the years, that’s nothing short of a miracle.

And while we’ve often chafed at this waiting season, at the seeming silence of God for weeks on end, I’m realizing something else: we just haven’t been ready.

When we came home on June 6^th, I’ll risk sounding melodramatic by saying that the state we were in was: traumatized.

I hate using that word because so many people have been through far, far worse life experiences—real reasons to be in trauma—but it’s the best way I know to describe us.  It certainly helped for my therapist to hand me that word during the first two-and-a-half hour session that I sat numbly on her sofa—I couldn’t even cry—and answered her litany of questions. I remember a pastor friend saying to us, “I’ve been where you guys are, and I wish you could just rest for awhile.”

So, as much as we wanted to be ready for God to use us, to jump right into the next thing, we had nothing to give.  We had less than nothing.  We were in the negative—or at least I was.

You know how I know that?

Because it’s six months later and already I’m a different person.  I couldn’t see how bad it was until time gave me a little distance to see more objectively, and until stability, medication, a whole long stretch of good health, and lots and lots of supportive people all around us breathed healing and rest and encouragement into my bones.

I’m coming back to myself.  But it’s more than that.  David says lately, “You’re different.  You’re doing better, aren’t you?  But not better than when we lived overseas, better even than before that.  Better than you’ve been in our whole marriage.”

He’s right.

I’m different.  It’s not this upbeat, great-mood different, like now I’m finally happy with my life.  No, there are still lots of hard days—lots of days I’m grouchy or complaining or just too tired, whole days that I grieve the death of years of dreams and plans. Now I have to learn to live with a level of depression and anxiety that’s more severe—I may have to live with it the rest of my life.  So it’s not everything’s-perfect-now different.

But there’s a peace in the center of my heart that I’ve never felt before.

It’s a complete mystery to me that God took me to rock bottom—a bottom I didn’t think I’d survive—and somehow it was that very breaking that brought me out of the darkness into a wide open space.  A space where I can breathe again.

I know this for sure: if not for the breaking, I would not have the peace.  I wouldn’t be able to lift my head up to look God in the eye.  I wouldn’t be able to tell you, “He’s enough.  He’s taking care of me.  I’m not worried about the future.”

I’m not worried about the kind of ministry we do, about the pressures it will bring.  I’ve always thought, with dread, I’m not good enough for ministry. I’ve feared people discovering that truth—discovering that I don’t deserve to be doing what I’m doing.  And you know what?  Now I know I’m not good enough.  I don’t deserve it. I can’t succeed.  I can’t be strong.  There’s nothing to hide—it’s out there for everyone to see.

What an enormous relief.

There’s freedom in knowing the truth, and making the truth known.  And with that freedom, the dread and fear are easing quietly away.  The fear of what kind of identity I’ll need to have as a pastor’s wife, the fear of failure, the worry of measuring up to people’s expectations that have hounded me for years, they’re nowhere to be found.

By God’s grace, I am who I am, and if He wants to use this broken, weak, anxiety-riddled, introspective woman, He can.

Mostly, He just loves me.  And that’s where I sit today.

I feel my heart  beginning to grow hopeful and excited at the possibilities of the ministry we will embark on together as a family, of how it will continue to shape and deepen and mature each of us as we learn and serve together.

In the meantime, my heart aches over the loss of South Asia, but during my days, I’m content.  I’m content as a mom of our two precious, exasperating, delightful kids.  I’m content as a friend.  I’m content cooking in my light-filled kitchen and meeting new people and listening to my husband’s dreams over a glass of wine.  I don’t think there’s a single day in the last six months I haven’t thanked God fervently that my brother’s children are nearby, that I can hug and kiss them anytime I want.  I’m content with laundry and play dates and homeschooling, with the quiet rhythm of my days.

I’m–miraculously–content with who I am and where I am, and it’s out of that contentment that I wait for our next season, even as I continue to heal, even as I live our next season.