New Year Reflections
As we look forward to the wonderful whirlwind of adventures 2016 holds for us, it’s impossible not to think back on this time last year and feel awe-filled at all God has brought since then.
One year ago we had only lived in the city a few months and were focused mostly on figuring out how to be married in a new place with nearly all of our friends and family long distance. We lived off of Derrick’s minimum wage job at a local car wash and a couple of painting commissions from old networks, and in hindsight it’s really a wonder how we made it. Although we were being nourished by weekly services at Bloom Church, we were still struggling to discover a house church community to do life with and grow alongside. We talked very wistfully of our one-day adventure overseas and had no thoughts, nonetheless plans, of becoming parents anytime in the near future. Hah!
How surprising and delightful it is to be a child of God. Early in 2015, we were embraced by a beautiful community, a house church that has been pivotal in our growth and healing. During this time, the Lord began to break into our hearts, our spirits, in deep ways. It truly felt like hardened soil being broken up to make space for new life. At the time, it was one of the most painful things we’d ever experienced. It's not fun to face your ghosts, your sicknesses. Thanks be to God that his light exposing the darkness is a kindness, because he doesn’t just leave us bared out in our naked deformities. Instead, he rushes in. He actually puts his own hands on the most gruesome things about us and recreates, extending his pure righteousness to become ours. It’s so humbling to experience.
In early Spring, amidst all the cultivating and sifting, the Lord planted a desire in our hearts for Baby. This completely tested my fears and control. Slightly because we were planning a 9-month-long adventure across the world and taking an infant overseas is difficult, but mostly because we were still, in my opinion, being mended and healed and I was terrified of tainting our little one with our brokenness. I am so grateful to have been reminded by Jesus that our baby belongs to him, that he will never stop recreating us and that there is no amount of perfection we can achieve that would “save” Baby. Jesus is Savior. We are merely the broken-but-being-made-well-humans whose responsibility as parents is first and foremost to point to the Creator, the Deliverer and Shepherd of our lives. In hindsight, I can’t imagine this coming year, even in the midst of all the changes and travel, without our precious babe. I know now with all my heart what deep purpose Baby has in forming us as we embark on our quest to witness God’s growing Kingdom through the tangible lives of his children across the globe. We are so excited!
I want to clarify that not every moment of this past year has been a groundbreaking, fiery-faith-filled experience. In fact, adjusting to pregnancy has really tested my flesh. I have struggled with doubts and fears, I have not handled exhaustion and the physical limitations that come with growing a human very well. I wish I could say that every morning I woke up with gratefulness for this little life and a thirst for Christ shaping me into the mom and wife he wants me to be, but the truth is, those days have been rare throughout the past 7 1/2 months. We have been blessed to have had more work than we have time for, but that has also made schedules rigorous and demanding and it's been a struggle to fight for times of stillness before God. Not surprisingly, we have had some pretty ugly moments of mistreating each other in the height of our stress, not the least of which was when we attempted to piece together an IKEA bed, which ended in a screaming match and a pretty pitiful tug of war over one of the side pieces. There have been many moments we have slipped into our old ways of surviving and living by our strength alone. In my mind, I would be tempted to say that this behavior should disqualify us from a Kingdom-centered journey overseas or even becoming parents. I am so relieved that God is so different than me. He offers so much grace. He gives us a beautiful inheritance because of His son—an inheritance that doesn’t match us and our childish selfish tendencies at all, but an inheritance that actually makes us more and more like Jesus as we receive it and walk in it.
We are so humbled and grateful to feel our King’s consistent leading towards these amazing adventures in 2016. Having a baby in 6 weeks, moving to West Palm 6 weeks after that and then flying to Kenya in early summer with all the provision and supplies we will need to travel to three more countries feels like crazy talk. But we are grateful that the circumstances feel impossible enough to us to rule out our handling it on our own as an option. We know the only way forward is to be fully dependent on God’s Spirit—in his providing, directing, connecting, revealing and inspiring. Knowing that this coming year, much like last year, will be filled with happenings impossible apart from God gives us great peace. We are eager to be close to him as dependent children following behind a wise and good father who knows well the path before us. We are filled to the brim to imagine our little one observing his or her parents living life in this manner of vulnerably depending on our Father and for Baby to consider that way of life normal.
As much as this trip may seem like a journey exclusive to the Collinses, we can’t say enough how incredibly grateful we are for the numerous bonds of connectedness we feel to our community. God has used you to affirm this calling, to echo the heart for God’s Kingdom come in the ways he is working in your own lives, and to surround us with the love of family—the kind of family that truly bears with each other through hardship and rejoices genuinely together in sweet seasons. One great example of this is the massive waves of love we have felt for us during the anticipation of Baby entering the world. This child lacks not one thing they need because of the generosity of those who love us! The space we are making for them in the corner of our room is packed with wonderful goodies gifted to us. We have been so blessed to receive showers of celebration over Baby’s life from our current community in Denver, from our family in the Midwest and our friends and family in West Palm and we can’t thank you enough!! As we look towards our coming travels, we desire to share with you the blessing of our discoveries, deeply believing that this experience of God’s global body is meant for so many more than just us. We ask for your prayers as the final phases of planning and we look forward to posting more details about our destinations in the weeks to come. <3
From our little family to you, we pray you experience a 2016 brimming with the kind of real hope and joy that overwhelms any difficult circumstance. †
