This is going to be an interesting post. Many of you that read this will not understand what I'm saying. Sorry about that.
This has been an incredible journey for us. The point of the whole thing (sometimes lost in the fun) has been to find a new place to live. More specifically - the place that we feel God wants us to be. You see it wasn't just John and Stephanie deciding to leave Virginia. Our faith is very important to us and we felt that God wanted us to move on. There were several reasons for that - but chiefly we felt it had to do with our immediate family having more time to spend together!
When we began our discussions on this last fall - around a year ago - we began looking at areas of the country we could move to. It was obvious to us that we couldn't stay in the DC metro area - it was just too expensive to be closer to work. And I couldn't support my family from any employment in Fredericksburg. So, we started doing research. One of the places that rapidly came to my attention was Boise, Idaho. Now I honestly couldn't tell you WHY it stood out to me. Maybe it was the recreation opportunities, or the fact that Boise has been in the top 5 as one of the best places in America to live according to Money and Fortune magazines for several years running . Anyway - it quickly became the favorite of mine on the short list of places to check out.
Before we left Fredericksburg, we talked to our pastor and told him we were leaving and why. We told him about our short list and he said that he didn't know anything about any of the other cities, but once we got to Boise we just HAD to check out the Vineyard Church there. OK... I guess we can do that. Now for some of the people that we know that are reading this - going across the country to check out a church may seem a bit wierd - I understand your perspective - I really do - but bear with me here. We were checking out the city anyway so it wasn't out of our way!
While we were traveling through the south during July, we visited some friends in Birmingham, Alabama. We attended church with them on a Sunday and had a little chat with their pastor about our adventure. Interestingly enough, he said that he didn't have much to say about the other cities on our short list, but if we visited Boise, we HAD to visit the Vineyard Church there. Hmmmmm - very interesting. Almost conspiracy like .....! John, our friend in Birmingham, also suggested that we talk to a couple that he knew and ask them to pray over us. I figure we can ALWAYS use any prayers offerred on our behalf! They spoke with us, prayed with us and prophesied over us (yes- prophesied). They spoke a few things concerning us, but one in particular stood out to us in a peculiar way. They said that we would find a place and think that it was the right place for us to be. We would be there for a while and God would prosper us there, but then we would move on to another place and that was where God really wanted us to be. (OK. Did I understand it? Not really. Why couldn't we just skip past that place and go directly to the place that we were supposed to end up at?? We didn't ask them that but as we reflected over it we wondered that and other questions like how would we know?) I tell you this so what comes later will hopefully make more sense to you.
We visited lots of other neat places over the next month and a half. We've related those stories to you here in this blog. Tweleve days ago we arrived in Boise, Idaho. There was an illuminated cross on the mountain to greet us. It was cool, but odd to us. We also found there are no less than 8 christian rock stations and a Bible college in town. That first Sunday we were in town, we attended the Vineyard Church. It was a cool church - one that we felt quite comfortable attending. It looked like a food court when we walked in according to Steph's first impression! (They love their java up here.) After the service, we went to the welcome center to find out more information about the town and the church. While we were sitting there, someone who wasn't part of the welcome team walked up out of the foyer and handed me a brochure for the men's retreat the following weekend. I accepted it, but thought that it was irrelevant because we would be gone by Thursday. As the week progressed, I started to feel that maybe I should attend the men's retreat because I needed to get closer to God and hear from Him. I needed to hear if this was the place. I had been falling in love with it, but I didn't want to come here for me - I wanted to know what God wanted from us.
So, I went. I made quite a few new friends on the retreat. It was interesting when we went around to introduce ourselves - I didn't attend their church or really even live in their town - I was just passing through! They accepted me like I had been there for months though! Friday night I got up through the middle of the night and went out to stand next to the campfire and warm up. I had been out there for only a few minutes when a man named Brad came out of his tent to hang out at the fire as well. He was being an insomniac - largely due to the intense snoring of so many of the guys! (I had brought earplugs so it hadn't been bothering me!) Brad and I talked for about two hours before I returned to my tent to get some additional sleep. While we were talking though he said that God had given him a particular scripture to share and since I was the only one awake, he thought it must be meant for me. He read me Jeremiah 31 and, I'll be honest, nothing really jumped out at me - until the next afternoon. After one of the teaching sessions, I climbed the hill or mountain or whatever( - about 1000 feet of elevation change from camp) to have some quiet time to read my Bible and pray. I reread Jeremiah 31 (among others) and had two things jump out at me - one verse talked about "I will prosper you in the desert" and another talked about "planting vineyards on the hillside". I wondered if this was referring to Boise, as it is considered a high desert and the Vineyard is the church we were directed to from across the country. I also wondered if it was just me trying to make the scripture fit Boise because I liked it. I wanted something more than that to base a decision on!
I didn't hear specifically from God during the retreat. Several of us left Saturday evening after the last session. There was to be no more teaching to happen so we decided to sleep in our own warm, soft beds! Steph and I had a conversation before sleep on Saturday night. I told her that I hadn't specifically heard from God yet but I really liked it here - I thought it was probably the place for us. She said she kind of liked it, but her gut said no - it is not the place. She said that she had not heard from God on it either, so she wasn't ruling it out - but probably not. I was crushed - her response hit me like a sucker punch because I thought she was feeling the same as I was about the town. However we were not in agreement about the city and that was paramount to us in importance. We knew that it was incredibly important that we agree on where God wanted us to be. In light of this I resolved that we would leave on Tuesday to continue our search.
I have a side note here - Are you familiar with the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac? How God told him to go and sacrifice his son? And then when the time came to actually go through with it, God said stop - He just wanted to know if Abraham was willing to do what He asked of him. OK - hold that thought!
On Sunday morning, we went to church again and it was cool to have so many new friends there that I had met on the retreat. Travis had been the worship leader during the retreat and he and his wife "coincidentally" ended up sitting next to Stephanie and I during the service. After service, I was talking with Travis and just telling him about how I was feeling and how it hit me hard that Steph was not feeling the same way I was about Boise. I began to relate to him the conversation I had with Brad at the retreat and began to tell himm about Jeremiah 31. Travis stopped me from reading it to him and just said to tell him what stuck out to me. I told him about prospering in the desert and planting vineyards and he was blown away. He said the previous Thursday God had led him to those exact same verses in the exact same chapter of Jeremiah. He went on to immediately invite us to be part of a small group of people who were going to be leaving Boise in a couple of years to plant a Vineyard church in Bend, Oregon. WOW! Steph mentioned that he really didn't even know us, and his second answer blew me away even more. He said that in life you have many friends, some who you consider good friends, but only a few people in your life who are really lifelong friends who you know you can really trust. Travis hardly knew me but said inside he knew I was one of the few. Double WOW!
So, anyway, Nan (Travis' wife) invited us to their home group that Monday night, anticipating that we'd already been invited to 5 others by then. We hadn't, and since we were still going to be in town, we decided to go. While there, we met several other couples with and without kids. We enjoyed the very laid back evening of just getting to know more people. One of the couples' little girls was having some health issues and Travis brought up that he had just acquired a Body Cleanse device that is supposed to pull toxins from the body through the pores of your feet. Being me and having worked for a bit of a nut case, I was incredibly cynical. But, I also figured it was worth giving it a try if it might help Stephanie get rid of her MS. After the home group was over, I went outside to talk to Travis about maybe getting Steph in to use the detox machine to see if it would help her with her MS. Travis cocked his head at me and said, "You knew I was a chiropractor, but did you know that I am one of a thousand brain stem specialists in America? I don't clain to heal anyone, but by putting the brain stem back in proper position, God has brough healing to every person who has ever come to me with MS. A man came to me who had been paralysed from the neck down due to MS and today he rides a bike!"
I was flabberghasted! When I told Steph, she was overwhelmed. She had been struggling with moving to Idaho because she never intended to be this far from family. But she kept having the verse from Matthew come to her mind that said "If anyone loves their mother or father more than Me (Jesus), then they are not worthy of me." So even though she struggled and cried a lot with it, this final news from Travis that through what he does God can heal her was more than the proverbial burning bush. It was a forest fire that could not be ignored.
So, this is where God has brought us and this is where we will be for a time. I think God just wanted me to place my desire to be in Boise on the "alter" as Abraham had to place Isaac. God never intended for Isaac to be sacrificed just as He never intended for Boise to be "sacrificed" by me. He merely wanted to see if me and Abraham were willing to trust him even when it made no sense to us. I like to think we both passed that test!
