Sitting in the silence

God's timing is a funny thing. It would seem that after this past year of preparing me and sending me again to Zambia to be apart of His plan there, I would come back and all things would just fall into place here for Extending Hands. But that has not happened yet and once again I sit and wait on God. I have learned though, that waiting on God in His silence takes far more than patience and the will to "hold out". It is about experiencing what God wants you to know in the seeming absence of answers we so desperately want to hear.

When I came back from Zambia last year I spiraled into a very dark place in my soul. I was frustrated and broken on so many levels. I knew God was putting on the gloves and getting out the scalpel to do surgery in my life. I had to give God permission to search my soul. Psalms 139:23,24-"Search me, O God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." He brought some pretty sobering things to the surface that needed to be addressed. I didn't know it at the time, but God was beginning to prepare me for what He truly wanted Extending Hands to be. I had assumed that Extending Hands would just be a Fair Trade business that would benefit the widows and women of Zambia and would also bring other assistance to their community. I was wondering though, when we were going to get moving on Extending Hands, as that is why I had went to Zambia to make some good contacts and connections. But God was silent. In no way was I lead to move forward with Extending Hands at that moment. God had other plans for me and the ministry that Extending Hands would become. The cleansing was just the beginning to a long process of allowing me to heal from so many things in my life. It was the beginning of the bigger picture of how God wanted to use me not only here but in Zambia.

That brought me to some counseling that I didn't really think I needed but at my pastors recommendation, I started. Boy, had I known where that was all going to lead...it was like falling into the abyss of lost emotions and tears I had not known were missing. I walked through some hard things form my past. Things I had erased from my memory or chosen to believe was my fault. It also brought my husband to his own journey. After watching me for awhile and seeing the growth I was experiencing, he too decided to start counseling and deal with the past and the secrets of his own life. Once again, had I known....


This put both of us into total arrest on the table of God's surgery. Our life, our marriage, our family, our future was all at stake in those months of not knowing if we were going to make it. It was then and there that I had to decide once and for all, if I trusted the God I had grown up with. I had to choose my own way or God, pure and simple. I had to decide if I was going to make the right choice, the hard choice. You can't get up off the table in the middle of surgery. Well, you can but you will not see the power of how God will work through the circumstances of your life if you trust Him. With the help of solid, godly people in my life, I made it through this "near death" experience and allowed God to finish surgery.

The next step for me included, picking the right "nurses" to assist God in this process. I just got done reading a wonderful book called "The North Face of God", by Ken Gire. In one of the chapters it talks about how choosing the right "team" makes all the difference. The difference of living or dying during a mountain expedition. He talks about how it is the same in life when we have to divulge our hurts, our secrets and our pain to someone. That someone must be willing to save you in the midst of horrible circumstances. They must be willing to put their own lives on the line to pull you out of the frozen cavern you have fallen into. I have had those people in my life. Those who were willing to put aside their own hurts, their own problems, their time, schedules and other priorities to walk along side me and make sure I got to the other side. And not just get there but get there healthy, whole and healed. There is a difference between getting through something in one piece and being better after the experience. That is how I made it back to Zambia, which was the other side for me.

God allowed me the opportunity to go back to Zambia in May to get Extending Hands going. I had paper work to do over there and wonderful days with the widows who are making me jewelry. Miraculously I got my paperwork done while I was there (which I guess was an astonishing feat!) and I had assumed that maybe, just maybe that meant when I returned, all things would fall into place here. This is where I am now, waiting for money to fall out of the sky to get everything that we need to buy, get done, file etc. This is where I say, "I will not just sit in the silence, but I will listen in the silence, and I will not miss what I am handed every day as I talk to God and follow His plan for my life, my marriage and my family, first." And I will remember that His ways are higher than my ways and His thoughts, higher than mine. It is easy to say that stuff but do we live it? Are we willing to follow a God that doesn't go by the rules and ways of men? A God that does not measure success in American, get 'r done, terms. I have to ask myself if I want to do this in my own strength, my own pull up your bootstraps strength, or let God show Himself by leading me down a path that won't make sense to most people for His glory and His honor. Is my life a walking memorial to the grace and faith that He has so wonderfully bestowed to me as I seek a God that does not need to show Himself or do miracles to demand the praise He so deserves.

I know God has created Extending Hands and He will bring it all to fruition. I know He is right now preparing the people he wants on the board and the money that will get this all going. I have one job, to continue to praise God for who He is, not what He has done or not done in my life and to live like I believe that He knows better than I. That His silence is not the absence of His power but a chance to show my trust in His power unseen by the human eye.