"I am doing a New Thing"

Hi Friends!

Yesterday marked exactly one year since we uprooted our lives. On May 31 of last year, after a month of figuring out how take care of a newborn and packing up our little one bedroom basement suite, we flew from Vancouver, BC, to Toronto, Ontario. Our baby slept the entire way, only waking once or twice to feed. We landed in the afternoon, which felt like morning to us considering the 3 hour time change, and my in-laws drove us from the airport to my parents house where we would settle into their basement suite for the next 10 months. 

The friend who dropped us off at the airport has been one of my best friends since we were 3. I should have been really sad saying goodbye to all of the people I’d done life with over the past 18 years (I lived in BC from the time I was 8 until last year when I was 26). I was so focused on my newborn baby and making sure all of our packing and travel plans went as smoothly as they possibly could. I couldn’t quite process all that was changing at the time.

I was elated to be living close to our families again, especially with our first child. But several months in, I started to understand all that I had lost when we moved across the country. Mostly, it was friendship that I missed. I come from a unique group of girlfriends. My husband always reminds me of this. The type of girls that have hearts of gold, remind me of who I am, laugh with me and cry with me. We had memories that went far, far back to when we were kids. You can’t make “new, old friends.” 

This past year held definite highs and lows, trials and triumphs, questions, anger, gratitude, grieving, and celebration… all mixed in together.

I remember one day last fall, I was crying in the bathroom. (We all do this right?) :) I was crying out to God, asking him some hard questions. And quite clearly, he gave me the following verse:

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” -Isaiah 43:19

I am doing a new thing, He said. Ok, Lord, I answered… and carried on. Obviously I knew we were in a situation where everything was new. A new province, new living situation, new baby, new church, new role as parents, new friends, new climate, new, new, new. But it took some time for me to really understand what He meant.

It wasn’t just that everything in my life was new. It was that God was doing something new in me. I am convinced now more than ever that God is completely good, faithful and loving towards us. I’m learning, though, that Him being faithful doesn’t necessarily mean living an easy, cozy life. There will be hard things we have to go through. But none of these things lack purpose. God uses it all to draw us nearer to Him, if we can simply let Him. 

This new thing God was doing in my heart… it wasn’t really about me. And that’s where I realized I could breathe a sigh of relief. It wasn’t about me striving to get to this new place with God so I could feel closer to Him or feel like I had things more together. 

It was actually about me letting go and receiving from God everything he had already given me, so that I could begin living in a new kind of open space and freedom that already was and is mine in Christ.

The growth that has happened in my heart and mind and marriage and family… none of that is my doing. In Ephesians 3:20 we read that “With God’s power working in us, God can do much, much more than anything we can ask or imagine.”

Sometimes, it’s really, really hard for us to just let go. To give up striving and simply receive. But I’m learning to let God “lead me to the Rock that is higher than I” (Isaiah 61:3). He is faithful. He is trustworthy. He is the God of Peace. His promises to us are real. He is moving amongst us. And He will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the deserts of our lives.

At the end of Isaiah 61, after God talks about doing something new, He says:

I provided water in the desert,

rivers through the sun-baked earth,

Drinking water for the people I chose,

the people I made especially for myself,

a people custom-made to praise me.

We are custom-made to praise Him. Just let that sink in for one minute… 

That is a beautiful truth. No matter the low valley or high mountain we are on in life right now, we are a people custom-made to praise our Jesus who provides water in the desert, rivers in a sun-baked earth, and drinking water for His people. 

 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.”John 4:13-14