What IS Next?......

I get asked the "what is next" question a lot. As well I should, since my life has been one movement to another over the last year, school, summer camp....it's just this current stage is really hard to answer.

What I DO know is this. I'm still employed by Fairfax County as a substitute teacher. I'm pretty sure I have a place to stay in NOVA. And I know that this whole process of discernment into where God might be leading me to be a worship leader may take time, and multiple interviews...:o)

So the answer for now, is to get back into subbing, look towards a potential relocation, and start knocking on doors.  I joked with my mom this morning, "I'm a jill of some trades." For the next couple of months that means speaking at churches, leading worship at others, and working with kids...whatever opportunity opens, I am ready and willing to see it through.

A wise new friend the other day said to me, "We all need a healthy dose of fear."  I remember the panic that would grip me about Colorado the couple of weeks leading up to my departure. How afraid I was to get settled, find a home, leave my family, and make new friends. And a year later, I wouldn't trade Colorado or my last year for anything.  So I take the momentary questions and doubt in stride.  I thought at the end of the summer I was staying in Christiansburg. I told everyone I was staying in Christiansburg. But the longer I held that decision in my hands, the more I struggled to find peace with it. The only course of action was to find out what leaving felt like, would I struggle whether I stayed or left? And by no means was leaving easy, I find my heart attaches and settles in fast and I left behind deep, kinship friends.  But as I untangled my heart in the slower, disconnected pace of Colonial Beach, I began to feel ever so lighter, with the promise of what is to come. And last Friday, as I rode with my mom to meet some old friends from church for dinner, that peace came.  God's whisper was sweet and quiet and was merely, "keep on the course, I've got this."

I rest in that.  I find peace in that promise.  And so as I am house sitting this week in Chantilly with two sweet labradoodles who are currently sprawled across the floor, I am as ready as everyone else to find out...what is next.