**Note: I know many people have asked for an update on our move and how things are going in our new neighborhood, but since I have been painting, and working on renovations and unpacking boxes and feeding small people and lugging laundry through the path of boxes and chaos, I don’t have it written up yet. But in the meantime, and for the sake of showing that we ARE still alive, here is a blog post I actually wrote 6 weeks ago, and never posted. Update post soon to come! 

For I am about to do something new.

See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?

I will make a pathway through the wilderness.

Isaiah 43:19

A single girl living a life of freedom and independence in New York City, the city she loves, but with a job she hates.

A single mom of five living in a small apartment in crime-ridden Newark,NJ recently “adopting” her four teenage nieces and nephew after her sister passed away, with no choice but to keep caring for them all and scrounge what she can to feed the large crew.

The CFO of a top U.S company, with a home, pool, and nearby horse farm that rivals the top vacation destinations of the country, but who feels empty in the corporate ladder he has so successfully climbed.

A missionary mom struggling through the culture shock of moving her family of six to one of the darkest and most desperate third-world countries in the world : doing radical things for Jesus, but wondering if she will survive it…survive tomorrow.

A mom of six with access to incredible school systems, Costco’s  and green parks in the suburbs of Atlanta, Ga, but who feel so fractured by the endless schedule because of all the resources available to her and her children.

These individuals, they are all close friends of mine. They are all Christians.  They know the Bible. They want to follow Jesus.  But each one is also struggling….groping along, wondering “how did I get here? And why does it look so endless and dismal?”

It just goes to show  that our circumstances can vary widely, but the exact same sentiments can be had by all. trapped. depressed. empty. purposeless. Rich or poor. Privileged or not. “Free” or bound.  All finding themselves in a wilderness.

And what to do with it?  With the wilderness we find ourselves in, with no seeming way out of it?

Ah. But there it is….we desperately want a way out. 

But the eternal promise is for a way through.

“I will make a pathway through the wilderness.” 

Our time on this earth is full of wildernesses. And instead of the long list of ideas on how we could get ourselves out of them….

if I just got a different job,

if I just didn’t have so many kids to take care of

if my work was just more fulfilling

if I just lived in a place that wasn’t so externally hard

if I just didn’t have so many schedules and responsibilities to take care of….

Then I’d be OK. Then I’d be out of this wilderness. Then I’d be happy.

But Jesus wants far more for us. He wants to give us eyes to see, He wants to train our eyes to see, and find, the pathway He is making through the wilderness.  A pathway for today.

A pathway that is strangely familiar

But is also new.

For the pathway is actually HIM.

I AM THE WAY…IN ME you will have peace….no one comes to the Father except through ME.

But it will also look differently each day. It will be new each day.

And our eyes for seeing it, they are in training.

So despair not, sweet friends.

Despair not, oh my soul.

He is doing a new thing. He is sending his very Spirit…His Graceful, Counseling Presence into this moment, and He will be in the next. Just have eyes to see Him there. See Him here.

Fully stand, leaning the full weight of your being onto this moment with Him, step by step, and moment by moment

and walk on the pathway He is making.

A pathway, not out of, but through the wilderness.

~~~~~~~

Some of my pathway stepping stones…only seen…only fully stepped upon, by inviting Jesus, moment by moment, to give me eyes to see the path He is creating through the wilderness of my filled-to-the-brim life.