reflections on a year past

Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.

Deuteronomy 8:2

A year ago, on the last day of 2007, we had only a vague idea of what the year ahead held for us. We knew we would have to move back to Singapore. Our sabbatical in Claremont would draw to an end. We would be back in real life! K would have to go back to work, and the kids to a new preschool.

But God has also taken us down roads unexpected, where we experienced fear, worry, anxiousness, but also God's joy, peace and love.

This year, Noah came home to us. As we worked this out, we have felt God prodding us along. We have felt God working it out for us - it was just little over six months from the point when we definitely decided that we were going to adopt to when Noah came home. We have felt God challenge us to keep believing His plan for us, when we learned of Noah's health issues. We have felt God's love and blessing as Noah settled into our family, and as we adjusted to being a family of five.

K and I continue to learn about God's father heart for us - how He loves, cares and comforts us, just as we do our children. As Josh and Emma grow up, we have felt challenged to become better parents, wiser parents, and have felt keenly our need for God's wisdom. They ask hard questions sometimes!

In our move back home, we have felt loss. It was harder than I had expected to give up all that we had been blessed with in Claremont. It was harder than I had expected to settle into our life back home. But even in this time of transition, I have felt God challenge us to keep to the course that He has planned for us. It would be easy to wander off, to seek something else because I think it is better, easier. But what blessings, what lessons would we be giving up then?

So here, now, this is what I know. God has been real in our lives. He has been faithful. He has blessed. And even in the hard things, we have been taught to trust that God is there, that He knows it all, that His hand is on us, and that His hand guides us.