Shaken, Not Just Stirred

Sorry, Pastor Michael, I totally stole your sermon title for my blog post.  If it makes you feel any better, your sermon was the inspiration behind what I am about to write.  Well, I guess I can't give you all the credit, but how about, say 47%.

For those of you who have no idea who Pastor Michael is or haven't had the opportunity to listen to this sermon that so profoundly impacted me, you are totally missing out!  And so, I have the link for you! That way you can check out the message for yourself and better understand what in the world I am talking about as I begin this post.

Great, now we're all on the same page...

A couple of days ago, I wrote about how God has been working, behind the scenes, to do something BIG in our lives.  I don't know all the details yet.  However, God seems to be revealing His plans little by little.  And it's really cool to discover some of the things He is doing.  It's also really scary as we realize more and more of what He's up to and what He is asking of us so that we can partner with Him in this amazing work.

The last post was about Ukraine and the wonderful privilege we will have this December to host a little boy (or set of brothers) in our home.  How that whole opportunity came about is pretty neat, and it's exciting to look forward to this winter and all that God can do in those short four weeks that the child (or children) is with us.  It's also a bit overwhelming as we think about raising $3,000, interacting with a boy who doesn't speak much English, and everything else that adding another child to your family entails (let alone a child from a completely different culture!). 

Hosting a boy from another part of the world seems so small in comparison to what else God has been doing in our hearts recently, specifically this past week.  For awhile now, both Lawrence and I have felt a "stirring" as we sensed God was preparing to do something in our lives, but we had no idea what that might be.  I was reading books like Radical by David Platt, Forgotten God by Francis Chan, and Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis.  By the time I finished reading Katie's story about her life in Uganda, which included adopting 14 girls (!!!!), I was ready to pack up my bags and move to Africa myself.  I even blogged about how I felt God tugging on my heart, showing me that He had something in store for me, for us.  A "mission" that would provide us with the opportunity to work wtih children in such a way that would rock their world as we introduced them to Jesus and modeled how to live radically, boldly for Him.  I mentioned that I might get a call from my mom asking if we were preparing to head overseas, and take her precious granddaughters with us!

Well, good news for my mom (and Lawrence's parents, and the rest of our family), we are not leaving the country.  At least not right now...I don't think.  BUT, we do want to pack up and move...across town. 

Specifically, we are looking for a house in either the Kellybrook, Brooke Ridge, or Auburndale subdivisions.  Lawrence has been teaching 3rd grade at Kellybrook Elementary for 3 years now, and he feels as though God is telling him, "This is home.  This is where I want you."  God doesn't just want Lawrence to put in his hours as a teacher though; we believe He has something much bigger for us as an entire family.  We sense that God is calling us to be "missionaries" to the kids (and their families) of the Kellybrook area.  To truly pour into their lives and have a lasting impact on these boys and girls, we must live among them.

A few weeks back, Lawrence and I were slaving away in the kitchen, taking apart our dishwasher and cleaning every single piece individually in hopes that we could get it working properly again (like actually having clean dishes at the end of a cycle!).  While we scrubbed disgusting hard water grime and gunk, we began to talk about what God was trying to "stir up" in us.  As open as Lawrence is to moving overseas, he didn't really think God was sending us to Africa.  He truly believed God had something for us right here, right now.  The right now part is extremely important to me, to us.  We don't want to keep waiting and waiting and waiting to "do" something "big" for God when He has something else for us right now. 

Our good friends Brent and Dara Pacheco were over the other night to watch American Idol, or perhaps it was So You Think You Can Dance.  Either way, during a commerical or after the show, we were discussing how we all felt compelled to "do" something "big" for God, but didn't know what that meant or looked like.  We all agreed though that we don't need to do "big" things for God to make an impact; we just have to be open to whatever God has for us and do that well, for His glory.  So, for Brent, that might mean running his side music business with integrity and cleaning sticker gunk off records before he sells them.  Or for me, I need to keep being intentional about visiting our neighbors.

For us as a family, it means being available to the kids in the Kellybrook community.  In the middle of our dishwasher talk, Lawrence mentioned having a Back Yard Bible Club.  I love that idea!!!  We already invite his students to camp, but why not bring camp to the kids, especially those who can't go to Ponca.  God has already laid a solid foundation to make this possible.  He has given great favor to Lawrence amongst his students' parents.  Many of these parents have sent their sons and daughters off to camp, 6+ hours away, in a different state.  They have never been to Ponca themselves.  They don't really know anything about the camp other than what we have told them in a brief 30-minute informational meeting.  And yet, over 75 kids from the Liberty area attended camp last summer!  It's not just Ponca though.  When Kellybrook and Brooke Ridge had their neighborhood garage sales last month, we drove up and down the streets in search of a bed.  At almost every turn we would hear some kid yell out, "There's Mr. Young!"  At one point, we had about 10 kids running down the street, following our Yukon.  When we finally stopped, they ran up and gave us cookies they were selling to raise money for their baseball teams.  The moms had to come over and see the girls; they ooed and ahed over Kellah's red hair. 

Like I said, God has been at work, behind the scenes, preparing for this and whatever else He has in store for the future.

We have been hesitant to start making plans to actually move, though.  The houses in those subdivisions are a bit nicer/bigger than ours, which we would like because it would give us an extra bedroom to have ready at all times for a foster child.  That way if we get "the call," we don't have to rearrange the girls' rooms, rush to Wal-Mart and buy a new bed, and set everything up, at 9 pm, 20 minutes before the child arrives at our house.  However, with an extra bedroom (and actual dining room, hopefully!), comes a bigger (not so nice) mortgage payment each month.  We are already counting pennies here, so to think about buying a bigger house seems absolutely ludicrous!  It probably is...unless God is behind things, which He seems to be, and then it's no big deal (to God, at least).

I guess God was growing tired of "stirring" our hearts and wanted to totally "shake things up" a bit.  And so, he used Pastor Michael to get our full, undivided attention this Sunday.  He showed us that He was done using a spoon and about to put us in a blender, on full speed.  After the service, we talked a bit, prayed with Pastor Bil, and went home to e-mail our friend Jay O'Brien and let him know that we are a bit more serious about this whole moving thing.  Last night we bought paint to completely finish our downstairs renovation project.  We made a list of some projects we need to get done, in the next four and a half weeks.  See, our goal now is to have our house on the market by the time we leave for Ponca on July 14!  Maybe in the two weeks that we are gone, and won't have to re-clean and get things ready for a showing at a moment's notice, Jay can show our house at any time.  And just maybe, someone will make an offer!

Crazy, I know.  Idealistic, totally.  Unreasonable, humanly a great big, fat YES.  We just might be a little off our rockers, but that's okay.  We are just doing what God has put on our hearts.  Right about now, our hearts are a bit shaken up.  And like I said at the beginning of this post, it's an exciting and scary time in the Young family.