For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

 Hi dear readers. It has been too long since I wrote, but here I am once again. As you likely remember from previous posts, I have been in a long season of waiting and wrestling and waiting some more. It hasn’t been easy, but as a friend told me recently, “hard isn’t bad; it’s just hard.” In fact, the times I now remember as those where I grew and experienced God’s goodness the most are the same ones I remember as the most challenging.

I have a feeling this season will be one I look back on with gratitude for all God has taught me and for the strength I have gained in the wrestling. I may never walk the same; perhaps there will be a limp, but I have wrestled with God and gained the blessings that come with those wrestling matches. I may not have a new name, but I have a new understanding of my own name and the identity that goes with it. (See Genesis 32:24-31.)

God (and everyone else) knows I didn’t want to leave Ireland last year.  I didn’t feel my time there was finished. I felt there were still parts of my story to be written in that place. I still feel that way, and I look forward to the time when a new chapter will begin on the island I love…. Even if it is only a brief, visiting chapter.

However, I have come to realize it was time to leave, at least for a season. I see God’s perfect timing in all that has happened in the months since I was forced to leave my “home” in Sligo. I got to see lives touched in my work at the Ranch in Colorado, through leading music and talking to people and just being myself. Even in my place of brokenness, when it felt I had nothing to give, God allowed me to be a vessel and gave to others and brought healing to my own heart as His Spirit poured through me.

Following my time at Snow Mountain Ranch, I spent a few short weeks with my parents. What a wonderful time with them. During that time, God provided the opportunity to debrief and receive more healing for (and celebrate God’s goodness in) all that has happened in the past 5 years since I first decided to move to Ireland. It was an intense – and if I’m honest, brutal – week, but God brought so much freedom and perspective in the process.

Now, as I sit in my aunt’s house in North Carolina, I think about the road that brought me here. A good friend was driving to North Carolina from Colorado and invited me to help with the trip – arriving near my aunt’s home just three days before she was scheduled for surgery. God made a way for me to be here just at the right time to help during her recovery, and also to visit others on this side of the country.

I don’t know what lies ahead, but I know it will be good (and probably difficult more often than I’d like). There is a time for everything, and though it’s not usually the timing I want,  it’s good. I know that I have seen and will see God’s goodness in the land of the living as I wait patiently for Him (Psalm 27:13-14).