It seemed like just a regular Saturday, watching a House Hunters episode and working on a writing project {a.k.a. perusing Pinterest}.
I had a nice iced fizzy drink in a mason jar with a glass straw, feeling all special and happy about the little things in life like mason jars and glass straws.
The kids were enjoying our grassy back yard, my husband was playing with the baby on the floor watching her learn to sit up. I didn’t expect what was about to happen.
Instead of just innocently enjoying watching a show where people move to new places and embark on new adventures (while being perfectly satisfied in my happy current existence) I started to get the itch. It’s a familiar one, so I knew right away what it was.
It feels like an unsettling, like new places might be desirable, like it wouldn’t be so bad to leave this house and find another. Like it might be time to move again.
I tried to ignore it, and continued on with my day. But the itch just got worse.
Soon I talked with my husband and he lovingly called me crazy, reminding me that we just moved to this house last summer, to this city just over two years ago.
But the itch would hear nothing of it.
Pretty soon I noticed my husband feeling the itch too. Comments about how going abroad to serve might be in our future. Out-loud wonderings about where God was taking us next were met with a side-eye and a zipped lip from me {I had to continue to let him think it was his idea, right?}. It wasn’t much longer and we realized the itch was a real “thing” and it wasn’t going away.
The problem? If you feel God calling you to a new adventure, you really should be prepared for that adventure to be the opposite of what you expected. We expected something fully “new” and what we got was what felt like a punch in the gut instead.
We were being called home to the city we grew up in. Where we hadn’t lived in over 11 years. A cross-country move from South Carolina to Arizona was apparently ahead of us, and we were scrambling to make it not be so.
The timing of the move (just 2 months away at the time) and the immense feelings of “been there, done that” were hard to swallow. We can’t even say that all our memories of AZ are good ones.
But what we can say is that we are now very, truly EXCITED to be going! We’re grateful for this change, seeing blessings at every turn, and fully expecting to flourish in our new home. But HOW did we come around? How did our hearts do a very gigantic 180?
The secret is this: when God calls you to something you don’t want to do, cry and cry a lot.
Yes, really.
Get it all out.
Then…ask God to make His will your will.
Those prayers will be answered though, so you really need to mean it.
The beauty in all of this is that those prayers will be answered! You will experience such peace on the other side of that kind of surrender. You really will feel fantastic and excited about the path you once dreaded.
So don’t be scared of that itch you may be ignoring, because I have no doubt there are blessings on the other side. A God itch is the kind you *want* to scratch!
Do you feel any kind of God itch in your life right now? What leaps of faith are you hearing whispered to you that you maybe need to listen to?
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By Arianne, of To Think Is To Create
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