I decided to blow the dust off my old blog and try it out again. We have entered a new phase of life, and Austin has taken the job of Minister of Youth and Education at Immanuel Baptist Church in Lancaster, SC. This is great! We love the extension of the body of believers there and we are falling in love with the town. There is only one little problem. We haven't been able to sell our house in Greenville, and are forced to divide our time. Mostly, that looks like Austin spending several days in Lancaster while the kids and I stay here going about our lives. We all go down on Saturday evenings, spend the night with one of the many gracious families that have opened their homes to ours, go to church Sunday morning, drive back that night, and start all over again.
It is a lot for our family right now, but we are so thankful that we know where we are headed and we know that this too shall pass. One of the main down sides to this situation is that Austin is getting to know our new family and getting to spend time with them outside of church. Because I am only there on Sundays and sporadic Wednesdays, I don't feel that I am getting to even begin the relationships that I am so desperate to deepen! I thought this would be a good way for our Lancaster family to know a little bit about what is going on with the Tram Fam while we aren't there.
I will be blogging different things: sometimes just stories of what we are experiencing, devotionals about what God is teaching me through His Word and life, maybe just pictures to show the whirlwind we call our home. I hope that this will help bridge the gap between Greenville and Lancaster until we can fully be there are begin the new phase of our lives! I will use one capital letter to refer to the people in our lives to protect privacy, so forgive me if that seems to flow unnaturally, but we can never be to careful in this age we live in!
This past weekend we stayed with a sweet family in our church that is actually related to me down the line in the enormous web that is the Dabney family. P's grandfather and my great-grandfather were brothers and both "Dabney" men. Ironically, her daughter's name is very similar to mine! We have already come to love this family even though we have not had the privilege yet to spend much time with them.
T (my 3 year old son) is in a huge Dinosaur phase right now. However, he is also in a scared-of-his-own-shadow phase as well. We walked into the house and I heard T yell, "Dad! you have to come see this huge triceratops!" A few seconds later I hear A say, "Whoa! That is a huge triceratops!" I have to go see this thing. I went in and there is this stuffed dinosaur every bit as big as you would think a real baby triceratops might have been. B proceeds to show us all the things this toy does. It was hands down one of the coolest toys I have ever seen. I thought, "we won't be able to get T away from this thing." Then I notice, he is hiding behind his dad's leg. No matter what we did, we could not get him within 2 feet of the dinosaur. The adults went back in the other room for our late night milshakes, and the kids stayed in there. I heard their oldest son trying his best to get T to warm up to the dinosaur. Finally, he would touch it and pet it, but no way was he riding it! He, however, has talked of nothing else since we left.
I have mulled over that situation since Saturday evening. It was so funny to me how amazed T was at this toy, but was so frightened to go near it. Without trying to make something out of everything, I was thinking this morning about how many of us react the same way to the Holy Spirit. We are amazed and overwhelmed at this powerful and HUGE part of the Trinity. However, most of us would rather stand back and say, "no way I am riding that!" God must look at us thinking, "Isn't that what you have been asking for? Don't you want my power? Don't you want to see miracles and revival in your generation?" We can't be afraid to tap into the power of the Holy Spirit. I want to see amazing things in my life! Let's make a commitment to dive into the Word, into prayer, and into the amazing adventures God has called us to! Ephesians 3:20 says that God is able to do "immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us." If we believe that, why are we content with safe, small, boring lives? Don't we want to not only admire from a distance the lives of other brothers and sisters in Christ who are living these amazing lives through the power of Christ, but jump in there are do amazing things as well?
God will use each and everyone of us right where we are in awesome ways! It is not only those in ministry He calls to the adventure; He wants to use people in every level of society in every level of every organization! Let's decide that we will no longer sit back and be satisfied with the status quo-let's jump on and ride that dinosaur!
