God’s Preparation and Timing by Stacy Camp

God’s Preparation and Timing

Isaiah 55: 8-9 For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.

That verse has held more meaning to me in the last 8 months than ever.  I have been waiting on God, pleading with God to hurry up, telling God now is the time.  You see for the last 8 months my husband has been traveling for work gone from home Monday- Friday while we were waiting for his new job assignment. We have known since 2010 that the plant my husband works for would be closing in 2012.  So I figured that the plant would close, and we would be relocated no later than a couple of months after closure.  God had a different plan, and it was His plan not mine.  

While we have been in this holding pattern for 8 months God has been preparing me for my relocation.  There will be the usual changes that come with moving, making new friends, finding a new home, finding a new school for my son, finding a new church.  Some of these things will be challenging for me. I am not a “social butterfly,” and it takes me a little longer to make friends and find my “place” in new settings.  As I look back over these past few months I can now see how God has been preparing me.  I like my “comfort zone” and don’t step outside of it at all. First of all God placed me in a Bible study group with women most of whom I had never interacted with before, and I have learned how to really dig deeper in His Word.   

I have a friend who has this “spiritual gift” as she calls it of pushing me outside my comfort zone without really pushing but just asking me to do things that I would have never done before and letting God do the rest of the work by showing me I need to do the things she asked.  My friend first asked if I would share scripture at a women’s retreat.  My first instinct was to tell her no, but God laid it on my heart that it wasn’t about me at all and that I needed to get over it.  So I decided on a scripture, a very familiar scripture that I have always loved Jeremiah 29:11.  As I was reading this scripture and preparing for what I was going to share and what this verse meant to me somehow I ended up in Lamentations 3. Really, God?  Lamentations?  It’s depressing!  Except for Lamentations 3:22-33 where there is hope through God’s mercy.  God knew the whole time this would fit perfectly with the theme for the weekend and the devotions lead by other women one even from the same scripture.  I love that God knows how everything will fit perfectly and work out according to His plan not ours.  I fought God so hard about those scriptures. It wasn’t what I had planned, but I submitted (and if you know me, you know I used to think the word “submission” was a curse word), and it was a perfect weekend with godly women.  

Next my sweet friend sends me an invitation to a Facebook page she had created for the purpose of moms encouraging other moms through this journey of motherhood and the challenges we all face.  I comment on FB saying this would be awesome wish I would have had this in the early challenging stages when we got a diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome with my son.  So what does my friend do…..? She sweetly suggests I should write a blog post about our struggle with Aspergers.  You got it my first instinct was to say, “no way”… God’s answer…. “Yes you will.”  So I did.  Comfort zone breached yet again!  So with all that being said I truly believe that God’s plan is bigger and better than mine. As I begin this new journey I have the tools to cope with being outside my comfort zone because I have learned to lean more on God and His word than my own thoughts or ways. 

Now that God has laid this foundation of preparation for our move I can be more effective in helping my children deal with the changes that lie ahead for our family.  I asked my 14 year old son, Logan, the other day what is concerns or fears were with our impending move.  His reply was “I am really not the type of person who worries about those kinds of things”.  I wish sometimes I could be more like Logan!  Due to his Aspergers his feelings are different than ours or sometimes even non-existent.  Logan doesn’t have those emotional attachments to people or things that typical people do in this instance Aspergers is such a blessing.  Will there not be any issues once we move?  I am not naïve enough to think not there will be routine changes that we will have to overcome.  Overcome we will with much prayer and guidance from the Lord.