A Journey Realized

We are here.  The final weeks of preparation have begun and I have found myself sorting through all kinds of emotions.  The last 3 weeks were so hard.  It is insane how closets and drawers fill up in houses!  I have no idea how all the stuff we had to rummage through even got into our house.  But the hard part was all of the good-bye hugs and tears.    I have pictures of many of those final embraces, at least the posed ones where we looked all smiley at the camera (phone).  The real not captured on my phone moments were a bit different.  They were full of tears and a deep sense of longing to hold on for a few minutes more, to say I love you just one more time.  So, by the time the door closed on that final good-bye.....I felt like I needed a couch and a therapist.  :)  Watching my kids cry as they said their final good-byes, well you might as well of took my heart out and stomped on it.  It bruised me.  
Now I am here at the Sending Base, surrounded by all of these people who have been praying for us, for our call to the nations, for our brokenness, for our provision, and for our love for the Lord.  We joined in on the weekly prayers this week.  They come together and pray corporately for the teams and workers on the field.  They actually have folders with pictures and names and they sit together and they just pray to the Lord.  We sat and prayed for the team we will be joining and the people we will be loving.  Imagine sitting their and realizing that once we are gone, they will still gather at the table and take our names to the Lord as our co-workers.  We are co-laborers all of us.  You and I, we are co-laborers, neither of us having a more important part than the other.  
To start the day we sat silently and just meditated on Christ.  We were not to ask Him for anything or petition Him for another.  We sat.  We meditated.  We prayed.  We fixed our gaze on Him, not what He was doing or what He might do.  We simply thought on who He was.  Something began to register within me as I forced myself to anchor my thoughts on Him.  The past month we have been frantically preparing to come here and continue our journey to South East Asia.  My sites have been set on this end.  But my journey has never been to South East Asia.  My journey has always and will always be to Christ.  That is our journey.  You and I are on the same journey!  It is a journey to Him.  Don't we get so caught up in where we are headed?  It is insanity how crazy we can get trying to figure out where we are going in life, what should we be doing, how should we manage getting there?  Perhaps our fixation on figuring out the purpose to pursue, blinds us from the journey we were all created to span.  We are all on a journey to Christ and that is it, it is the journey of our lives.  Inevitably our journey to Him will be effected by the voyage of others.  As we journey we pick people up along the way and we share in the sweetness of explorers finding glimpses of the treasure.  Your journey points me to Him and mine does the same for you.  It is so simple and yet so profound.  We see this all throughout scripture.  One person's search for redemption, ends up guiding others to that same redemption.  So, now I sit here and find myself thinking about how many of you have pointed me to the redeemer.  You were like a blazing torch signaling me forward.  My journey has taken a huge turn, one that will require a 24 hour flight....yes feel pity for me.  I will get stuck beside the gross airplane restroom with at least two of my kids and the entire time I will be paranoid that a zombie is behind the door.  Yes, compliments of my husband making me watch that terrible zombie movie with Brad Pitt in it.  Random...sorry.
My journey hasn't changed, we are still on the same journey.  As He calls and we all answer it will look a million different ways and yet we will constantly point one another toward Him.  Imagine how big of a destination that must be!