Out with the Old...

I am a little more than half-way through my Basic Officer Leader Course. Shannyn and Rowyn are staying with me in Virginia, we have just a few weeks left here before we finally return to Idaho to truly start off our life as a small family. As you've been reading (if you've read everything up to now) this has been a year of pretty extreme transitions. It's no longer merely certainty, but acknowledgement of the obvious to say that compared to our lives in January 2011, our lives in January 2012 will bear no resemblence. I am a newly confirmed Catholic, newly commissioned officer, no longer a college student, and my whole family has moved as far away on the continent as they possibly could have from where we have always lived, leaving me and one three-hundred-miles-distant sister to hold down the fort in Idaho. Shannyn also had to say goodbye to her father, gave birth to our daughter, and then followed me to Virginia for the longest time she has ever been away from home. Here in Virginia we are without a car, and since the people we usually ride with to church on Sundays are mostly non-Catholics, we no longer go to Mass. Any stability or pattern in our lives is a thing of the past.

We have never so keenly felt the uncertainty of our own future. But difficulty does not equate to despair. Beneath our feet, over our heads, and behind our backs the air trembles with the nearness of God. Vivid dreams, sudden convictions, and joyous surprises appear everywhere. Rowyn smiles in her crib, Shannyn finds some peace in my arms. I sense something is beginning here. This is a time of pruning, of cutting away the branches in our own lives--our very limbs and the fruit of our labors--but every snip carries with it the finality of divine purpose. There is a reason for all of this.

Last Sunday we went to Calvary Chapel in Richmond. I don't think I've been to a Calvary Chapel since I was 14 years old, and forgot how much I enjoyed the idea of going through the whole Bible, verse by verse, in every Sunday's sermon. When we visited their pastor was at the beginning of Exodus, when Moses was grown but before the burning bush. The pastor especially emphasized Moses' experiences as the single Israelite who had received the highest quality of education and renown for military exploits growing up in the pool of possible candidates for Pharoah's successor. How providence had positioned him for greatness! No wonder he had such a savior complex for the Israelites that drove him to murder. But when he finally drew blood in a revolutionary blow, not a single Israelite was ready to stand with him. It was not the divinely-appointed time. So Moses wandered in the desert, abandoned his Egyptian identity, and settled down in Midian. Only when he came to think of Egypt as a foreign land--not his home--was he ready to be used by God. It was as if God wanted him to forget the ways of the Egyptians (which were state-of-the-art) before allowing Moses to do what he was obviously born to do.

The sermon resonated strongly with me. Was God telling me that everything past was prologue? That all of my learning until now, all of what my experiences and trials have taught me, have to be laid aside if I'm to receive direction from him now? It wasn't until I got home that I saw the pamphlet handed out at the beginning of the sermon. On the back was printed this verse:

"Do not call to mind the former things, nor ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth, will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:18,19"

For those of you who didn't know, this verse has been a sort of road marker for my family for years. I remember since I was about 14 years old my parents would encounter this verse in a sermon, an internet article, or the most random place, whenever they encountered a crossroads or a moment of doubt. I remember that whenever they just didn't know, this verse seemed to indicate to them "You are right where I want you."

Uncanny. The only time I see it, it seems to indicate to me a similar message. I have to be willing to leave behind everything I thought I held if I'm going to see what "New Thing" is just around the corner.