No Pictures just a Long Overdue Update...

Jayden dropped our camera so we are picture-less for a little while. So, while I'd rather post a bunch a cute pictures I will write the update that I've been putting off.  It's just so much easier to put the fun, easy stuff out there, right?  Ok, I do have a funny thing to write...Jayden calls pepperoni "peppered brownie" and Journey calls grapes "beeps."  Love it. 

So, as most of you know we are not moving back to Alabama like we originally planned.  A few different things provoked us to actually pray about our next steps instead of just assuming that our original plan was still what God wanted.  Once we did that we really felt like we were supposed to stay put.  Crazy.  This was just about 2 months ago...it's all still sinking in :) Bottom line...we realize that we cannot fully know the will of God but we definitely think this is what he wants from us right now.  So, here we are.  

So far we have no idea what we are going to do here.  Demetrius is on a full blown job hunt and we are "waiting on the Lord" to show up in a big way.  We are house sitting for our friends until August 8th then we will be somewhere else in the city of Orlando! Needless to say we are learning big lessons on trusting God when things don't seem to make sense.  

One of the great things about this journey has been the the people we've been in community with at CityChurch Downtown Orlando.  I can't put it any better than Paul Miller did in "A Praying Life" (our friend/D's mentor emailed this encouragement to Demetrius a few days ago.)

I wanted to encourage you with my notes from Chapter 28, "A Praying Life".  I have commented on them but wanted to give you the actual quotes:  "We often don't recognize the Kingdom when it comes.  It is so strange, so low.  It looks like a mistake.  We look inadequate.  We feel inadequate.  We are inadequate.  The Father takes us on the same downward journey he took his son.  We want success.  He wants' authenticity.  The Gospel, the Father's gift of his Son to die on our behalf is so breathtaking that no one has been able to tell a better story.  If you want to tell a really good story, you have to tell a gospel story.  God keeps retelling Gospel stories in our lives.  They entail suffering, so we pray to escape the story, because living in a gospel story exposes our idols.  When our idols are exposed we often give up in despair.  But by staying in the story, the kingdom comes.  Poverty of spirit is no longer a belief.  We own it.  We return to the real source of love, our heavenly Father.  We become authentic.  Gospel stories bring meaning out of suffering.  As we bring God's mind to our stories, we see his hand crafting connections behind the scenes.  This is my Father's world."

We are encouraged and hopeful that the One who has called us to step out on faith is the same One who cares for us and will make our paths straight!