When God pushes the Easy Button

Moves are always hard. I have been—and am—really excited about this move, not least because we get to live in Stellenbosch, South Africa, which is one of the most beautiful and fantastic places on the planet. Postcard-perfect university town, surrounded by breathtaking mountains and picturesque vineyards, and only half an hour from Cape Town, another one of the most beautiful and fantastic places on the planet. How could we get so lucky!

But there have also been exhausting things, stressful things, things weighing on my mind. We spent our first 10 days in a small 1-bedroom flat, and it was very hot, and very small, and we were all sick, and no one was getting enough sleep. Then we moved into our current digs, a lovely 2 bedroom house where I actually have a whole study to myself and can work looking out at a lovely garden. Bliss. But this place is only available through March 1, so there’s been the question of where we are going to live after that. And the question of where our income is going to come from in March. And who is going to take care of our children while I earn an income and Joel is a grad student. And… the list just goes on.

I’ve realized I’ve felt kind of hesitant to talk to my American friends about our current state of affairs. I guess I feel afraid that we will be judged for being irresponsible, not having our act together. Did we really move to another country, with two children in tow, without knowing where we were going to live or where our income was going to come from? Yes, yes we did. And we have felt and do feel that we're doing the right thing. Which isn't to say it's been easy. (By the way, I don’t feel uncomfortable talking to my African friends about this. They’re much more in touch with the fact that life is for the most part not in our control, and that if God doesn’t come through we’re really in trouble. And they generally have pretty awesome stories about how God has come through. Just one of many reasons why I love my African friends, and feel they really build my faith.)

I’ve been reflecting this week on Mark 4. Jesus is in a boat with the disciples, and it’s so stormy the disciples are afraid they might capsize, and Jesus is asleep. What struck me this week is that the disciples’ fear is not that Jesus CAN’T do something about the storm before they all die, but that he WON’T. They don’t say, “What if he wakes up and tries to calm the storm but can't?” Their fear is that he won’t wake up in time to do something, and so they wake him up and ask, “Don’t you care?” (And then, of course, he turns the storm into still water and then asks the disciples, "Why were you afraid in the first place? Do you still not have any faith?") I’ve really related to the disciples in this particular brand of lack of faith. I know God can do anything. But I fear he won’t help us—that somehow he’s asleep on the job, not really tracking with our circumstances and our needs, that we’ll sink because he just didn’t bother to get involved in time.

I had a big reminder of God’s absolute mindfulness of us last week, when I got a request out of the blue to do a small project, as soon as possible. (The uncertainty in our finances comes from the fact that I don’t have a guaranteed income at the moment, as I'm planning to support us working as an independent consultant. But I’m only a couple months into it and so still don’t have steady work.) The project was only a couple days of work, but on top of a larger project I was already working on it was enough to put our finances in the black for February (woohoo!!!), and it was perfectly timed to when I had time to work. I so clearly felt God saying, “See? I've got this.”

But yet, I’ve still been battling anxiety on a daily basis. I can think of so many times when God has moved mountains on my behalf—when, as now, I didn’t have a back-up plan, and I knew that the blessings and provision that came my way were 100% and only from God. But yet, this time I’m still afraid He won’t wake up in time. And that we’ll be penniless and homeless and all kinds of terrible things which I shouldn’t even write about, because that’s giving them too much power.

So, our housing situation. I’ll be in Uganda on a work trip Feb 16-24, which meant that we really had to find housing for March before I left. We’re actually hoping to buy a house, but need housing for several months while we work that out. We have been running into an absolute brick wall in trying to find a place to rent short-term. No one wants to do it, and the fees for breaking a lease early are sky-high. This morning we were supposed to go look at a place that was unfurnished, and was too much money, and too far out of town, but it was available for only 6 months, so it seemed like our best available option. Right as we were leaving I called to confirm that we were coming, and was told we couldn’t come until later in the day. So I went back to my study and pulled up Gumtree (a website that is the South African equivalent of Craigslist) and started scrolling through the ads to see if there was anything new.

I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw there was a new listing, for a very affordable, 3-bedroom, furnished house that was willing to rent short-term. Long story short, we were viewing the house within an hour, it was great, and by noon we’d agreed to rent it for 3 months. We came back and talked to our current landlords, who agreed to let us move out next weekend and refund us our rent for the second half of the month. Settled! And isn't it cute?

Sometimes I feel like God has one of these:

A situation in life can seem so complicated and challenging and impossible, and then God just presses the Easy Button, and almost instantly the knot is cut and the pieces fall into place and sometimes something totally incredible and amazing and clearly supernatural happens… and it’s solved. I would often prefer, in my very limited wisdom, that God would deploy the Easy Button sooner. But I know that in his infinite wisdom he always does it at exactly the right time, and that while I stew and worry and stress and wonder if/how/when God is going to come through this time, I am learning more about the life of faith.

Still on my list of things we need from God really soon: Work. And wisdom about whether we should buy a house, and which house. (That’s a story for another post, but on top of looking at rentals in the last couple weeks we’ve also been looking at houses to buy.) And someone to look after our kids and help keep our house running.

On that last one: I’m currently checking references for a woman that a lady I just met had just met in a park, who approached her and asked for work (as an experienced nanny whose last employer no longer needed her services). Don’t worry, I am checking her references. But I’m also really sympathetic to the situation of hard-working women in this economy who need work and aren’t finding it, and are desperate enough to approach strangers in parks. Our last nanny/helper was such a blessing to us. (And we to her—I’ve been exchanging WhatsApp messages with her since moving here about how much she misses us and about how her new family isn’t treating her very well and she feels like crying every day when she goes to work. Makes me so sad.) So I’m believing God that somewhere in Stellenbosch there is a woman who needs the job with us as much as we need her, and that God will help us find each other.

We’d appreciate your prayers about all of this.

And for the situations in your life that need God to push the Easy Button—keep trusting him that He’s with you, he’s not sleeping, and he’s got it.