#5 Identity Crisis

In the past year, we'd been spending a lot of pillow talk on the possibility that maybe this place wasn't where we wanted to raise our children. Even though we have great friends and a great church and a school that our kids actually like, none of it seemed quite right. Our closest friends just weren't as close - we were all busy educating our children in different school settings, making new circles of friends, and playing different sports, and starting new hobbies. We have a lot of amazing people in our community, but maybe blaming it on being the introverts we are, we didn't feel a depth with most of them. It's started to feel like most people (ourselves included) here are working their tails off while trying to project through social media that it's all worth it. And in the end, will our kids be able to sustain a life here when they're adults? Maybe all these thoughts and questions in all sincerity were just God pushing deeply at our cores to cause us to position ourselves in a listening posture for what He was about to do?

We toyed around with living in other similar vacation spots - Florida, Hawaii, the Carolinas. But nothing was quite right - either the job, the education options, or the weather.

Somewhere in the middle of this search for identity, I'd been handed a book by "accident" to read - it was Jen Hatmaker's Interrupted - When Jesus Wrecks Your Comfortable Christianity. From the first pages, I knew I was headed for mind-altering "Jesus is gonna shake my world up" thinking. Her questions centered around asking God for a "holy passion" that could be directed into a calling that could never be mistaken as "predictable or boring." I started the book in January and closed it again soon after out of fear of what I felt moving in my heart.

My husband had breakfast with a close friend and mentor just before the Texas offer presented itself. He and his wife have raised three incredible triplets who are all about to be twenty-one. He was talking about their choice to raise them here in a loving home about a mile or so from the beach. He admitted that they loved their hometown and the memories they gave their children, but he also said something that he might even forgot he'd said. He said, "I'd choose adventure every time." Hmmm, adventure? For me, adventure is not jumping out of airplanes or being chased on safari. It's always been more like feeling like God is opening seemingly crazy doors for our family into something unexpected and walking through them holding hands.

That's where we're at right now. Holding hands, and going back to visit Waco one more time on an invite from the specialty department and their families. They want to meet us, take us out to dinner, and of course, talk to him a little more. They want us to see if we can imagine ourselves living there. We want to see if we can imagine ourselves living there. We want to hear God's still small voice saying, "yes, you can do this, and I will make it more than you can imagine" or "no, this is just the first step in where I'm leading you, but thanks for listening and following my lead."And so we follow the path of adventure, filled with trust, and a good mix of feelings between overwhelmed, excited, and cautious.