Go

I have always been a planner. I believe God made me this way for a reason, but I also see how he has been working to break me of it in recent years.

I think many of us experienced this breakage in those aimless pandemic days. All our plans went out the door as we were forced to stay home. I watched as plan after plan was seemingly taken right from my clenched fists.

While I don’t believe God would send a global pandemic just for me to learn painful lessons, I do see how he used that time in my life for this purpose. I learned how to stop, how to rest. I learned that my plans, while not inherently wrong, should be held loosely. I learned how to sit with God, how to hear his voice. I learned that doing is not necessarily as productive as being sometimes, and I know I learned that God is sovereign over it all.

A little more than a year ago, my husband and I found ourselves at a crossroads. It was time to sign the form telling our organization if we would stay the following year or not. Each year, we signed the form without any question. Yes, of course, we will be returning, we’d think. This was home. There was so much to do for God in Turkey.

That year, however, when those pesky pieces of paper ended up in our mailboxes, my husband felt a nudge.

Nudges are tricky things. We can easily ignore them, as they can be quiet and require already-listening ears. Often, though, God is just waiting for us to recognize that nudge as him poking us on the shoulder. He is eager to speak to us when we are willing to listen.

Hey, he says. I want you to ask me about this. I’ve got something to tell you.

This nudge led my husband to pray about our response to that form, and when he came to me one Sunday morning after his quiet time, I knew he’d heard something we didn’t necessarily want to hear.

“I think God is saying it’s time to leave,” he told me. “I’m not sure if it is after this school year or next school year yet, but we should keep praying about it.”

Tears poured down my cheeks that week at church as we sang in Turkish, knowing we wouldn’t be there for much longer.

We looked around every corner for open or closed doors, fasting and praying. When we saw what looked from a distance like an open door, we started walking towards it to have a closer look. We set up a meeting to see if the door was actually open.

The day of the meeting, school was cancelled (a classic spontaneous government announcement the night before), and we found ourselves at home when we would have otherwise been occupied by lesson plans and classroom management. We made our breakfast and split into our respective quiet time locations.

I sat at my desk, the wall before me covered in watercolor paintings from art prompts I’d done during time with God. I could see all the ways God had spoken to me. I saw a progression from who I had been when I’d arrived in-country for the first time to where I was now. One of the paintings said, “God is a good gardener.” I could see clearly how he had tilled, planted, tended, and harvested fruit the past six years.

I have done everything in you in this place that I want to do.

It was almost audible. Was that my own thought? It felt more like the voice I had come to know more and more as his.

I opened my Bible to the psalm for the day.

I sensed in that moment, as I read about the Lord’s voice, that it had been him. I had a picture in my mind of him closing the chapter.

While I was hearing this from God, my husband was also having his quiet time out on our balcony.

He picked up his guitar to sing a few songs. A stack of old chord charts was nearby. On the top of the first one, I had written “Mason, read Genesis 12” as a reminder before we played the song in the set. He took that as a sign to read Genesis 12.

He opened his Bible.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1, NIV).

That was not what he was hoping to hear, so he played Bible roulette to hear something else. He landed on Jesus sending out the disciples, the Great Commission. Finally, he started landing on passages about obeying.

When we came together, it was clear the Lord was leading us away from Turkey.

We called the open door that night and a few weeks later were committed to moving to Bolivia the following summer. It was a whirlwind, one we didn’t ask for. That, though, is following Jesus, isn’t it? In it all, he promises to be with us.

In the eyes of the world, it didn’t make any sense. We had a good life in Turkey. We loved our community and were really involved. We were provided for and were hoping to start a family there. And yet, we knew that following God’s call elsewhere was the right choice.

We’ve questioned our decision many times, missing Turkey and the people there. When the doubt comes or transition feels hard, I come back to the way the Lord led us here. He was kind to make it obvious to both my husband and me what he was calling us to do.

How have you heard God’s voice in the past? What might he be eager to tell you now?