My life is about to change.  In a BIG way.

Next year, both of my children will be in elementary school.  That means, for the first time in 8 years, this mom will have no kids at home during the day.

Since May 2010, I’ve been a stay-at-home-mom.  I taught online courses for several community colleges, and we had a second child in the fall of 2012, but for the most part, the kids and I have been hanging out at home.  We could go to my bible study or story-time at the library or visit my mom who was keeping my nephews a few miles away at my sister’s house whenever we wanted.

Once Ethan started kindergarten, I had the freedom to take him to school every morning and meet the bus each afternoon.  I could go eat lunch or chaperone his field trips, too. When Emery started preschool 3 days a week, I could volunteer at either of their schools.  I also began teaching more online courses, started research for this blog, and took on more photography jobs.

Over the years a few of those things have dropped off: My online course load has slowly dwindled until I had no courses to teach this past spring semester.  God began to show me that photography wasn’t my path right now, so I have backed away from that as well. Gone are the the things I envisioned myself doing after both kids were in school.

All of a sudden, I am left with little to no income of my own and the prospect of a lot more time on my hands come September when Emery starts kindergarten.

Bill’s expectation was that I’d go back to work once both kids were in school: to a Monday-Friday, 9-to-5-type job like I had before Ethan was born.  While I have absolutely nothing against working outside the home, I have learned from past experience that I need to look to God about this decision. He has something prepared for me to do next.

So, we’ve been praying.

When I originally started seeking God about this, I gave Him my list of requirements for what I’d like to do in the future.

My prayers went something like this:

God,

You know I love the freedom to be readily available for my children – to take them to school and be home when they get off the bus.  To eat lunch at school or volunteer there or go on field trips. So, when Emery goes to school, I’d like to continue with some kind of work-from-home stuff so I can continue being a mom the way I have been for the last 8 years.  Ok? Thanks! Amen.

🙂

Well, if you’ve spent any time with God, you know this typically isn’t how prayer works.  We don’t come to Him with a list of demands and then wait for those to be filled.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with praying for what you want…you may very well get it.

But, the thing is, our God is sovereign, meaning He is in total control.  He knows how this is all going to end up, and He knows how he is going to get us to that point.

And {spoiler alert} it typically doesn’t look the way I think it should look.  Have you discovered the same thing?

Will I get a full-time job working all day, 5 days a week outside the home?  Will I work part-time? Will I get more work-from-home opportunities? Will the blog and my writing career take off?  😉

I have no idea.

I haven’t gotten a clear word from God yet.

And that’s sorta nerve-wracking to be honest.

Right now, I’m between bible studies, so I don’t have anything specific to read when I have my quiet time with the Lord.  During these periods, I usually ask God what He wants me to study, and He usually tells me a book of the Bible. Lately, I’ve been hearing Him say “Habakkuk.”  That’s not a book of the Bible that you regularly think of – not like Genesis or Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – so finally I decided I’d better listen. I turned to Habakkuk to start on it and found that I’d already read it at some point.  I don’t remember doing it, but I had passages underlined and notes scrawled in the margins, so I have definitely been in that book already.

I started to ask what else I should read but then realized that He’d already told me Habakkuk, so there must be something there for me – something I missed the first time or something that I needed to hear right now that wasn’t relevant to me when I first read the book.

I began by rereading the ESV commentary that I like to use to go through each book verse by verse, and I went to the analysis in Eerdman’s Commentary on the Bible  as well as rereading the notes I wrote in the margins.

What I recalled as I reread passages and verses and notes was that Habakkuk was frustrated and complaining to God about the terrible things he saw going on around him in Judah, asking God when He was going to bring justice to the wicked.  In answer, God spoke to Habakkuk and sent him visions and a visit from the angel Gabriel to show Habakkuk what was going to happen.

Well, big surprise, the justice God had planned didn’t meet with Habakkuk’s expectations, so he questioned God’s choices for handling the situation.  (Sound familiar to you? Yep! It did to me, too. I was doing this very thing!)

Here’s what God showed me by having me reread Habakkuk: through conversations with God, Habakkuk was reminded that he could trust God.  God wasn’t going about things the way Habakkuk thought God should. God wasn’t using the “appropriate” means according to the prophet. But, the man came to realize that he needed to be patient, that God knew what He was doing, and that His ways and His timing were best.  In the top margin at the start of the chapter, I wrote, “Habakkuk theme = wait & trust in God. He works out all things for His glory,” and I knew why God had me in this book again.

I needed to remember.

Trust God in times of change.

Trust God even when you don’t know what He’s doing.

Trust God when it doesn’t seem like He’s doing things the way you think they should be done.

That’s all we have to do, and there’s such freedom in that.

Thank goodness for that reminder.  Did you need that refresher as well?

What have you been asking God about?  Has His answer been different than you’d hoped?  Is God reminding you to trust Him even when things aren’t going your way?

What about those of you on the other side of the waiting?  When have you had to trust God through a change in your life where you couldn’t tell what He was doing?  How did things turn out in the end? Would you share? Hearing from people who have been in the same situation would certainly be helpful for those of us going through similar circumstances.

This post is linked up at Grace and Truth Link Up