Brownies on Thursday?

Last night we had brownies after dinner. Brownies that I bought on sale, with a coupon. The cost was minimal, but still, brownies on Thursday? We don't eat brownies on Thursday at our house. Dessert is for Friday nights. Okay, okay, I confess I do eat a fun size pack of our Halloween clearance M&Ms or an occasional popsicle on the average weeknight, but hot from the oven brownies, no way!

So why, you ask, did we have brownies on Thursday? It was a celebration at our house. Yesterday was what we now call "job match" day at our house. We got "the call" we've been waiting for and after a week of truly believing that we had come to the end of the road with our overseas possibilities, God "wowed" us again.

Now, I need to be careful here and point out that it is still tentative and it's only unofficially official. Two big things have to do down: we have to sell our house by mid-April and we have to pass the trustees vote in March (which should not be a problem, but is certainly not guaranteed). But, even with those things on the table, we are light years closer than we were a week ago.

Here are a few details about how it went down, if you're interested! Last week, before Thanksgiving, we got a couple of very discouraging e-mails from our consultant. He was being as loving and gentle as possible, but he wanted us to face the reality that things were not looking good and we might not make it through the process. The problem, from what we could tell, was that there are some budget restrictions in place and so there is a reassessment of needs taking place. However, the company's age limitations for teenagers already has us on a very strict timeline and this temporary hold was going to push us back just enough that our window of opportunity would likely close before we could get through. One of the few jobs that is actually available during this time was not available to us because of our peanut allergy. So, we were stuck.

We were devastated. We traveled to KY last week with such a heaviness. On the way, Ryan expressed a desire to communicate the certainty of our call to the company again, but we were unsure if that was appropriate. We did not want to be manipulative, but we did feel that we needed to do everything in our power to fight for our call. He said, "I wish that we could talk to someone on the field and ask them what we should do." We decided we would just wait and pray.

The next morning, we got up and found an e-mail in our inbox from a missionary serving in Africa. We had communicated with this man several weeks ago and he had heard about our peanut disqualification. He wrote simply to encourage us and he wanted us to know that we needed to strongly communicate our call to the company over and over again if we were certain that we were to go. So, Ryan and I looked at each other and quickly confirmed that we had our answer about writing the company. We sat down and drafted a very heartfelt and honest e-mail about what we felt God was telling us. Now, I don't know if that e-mail had anything to do with our progress this week, but it had everything to do with bringing peace to my heart. I knew that I had done everything in my power after sending that e-mail and I was able to rest and celebrate the remainder of the holiday in peace.

We returned home from KY and began to settle back in to our rhythm of waiting and praying and on Tuesday, we got a call from our consultant asking us if he could discuss our case with the Drs. again and see if they would reconsider our allergy disqualification. Now, according to him, this isn't something they do. But, having lived in the country for years himself, he felt very strongly that we would be able to thrive even with the allergy. We agreed and I then skyped with some folks in a similar environment on the field and they also assured me that there are people in their group that have peanut allergies and do well, with simple precautions.

Again we began praying, waiting, waiting, praying and just asking God to give the Drs. wisdom and to give us peace. Then, yesterday, we got the call that we had been waiting so many months to get. The Drs agreed to allow us to go, though they did issue several cautions. Fortunately, the things they expressed are modifications that I already practice after 8 years of being an allergy mom. The kids were crazy with joyous hysteria and all appearances of order quickly went out the window. Prayers of thanksgiving were issued, maps were being pulled out, phone calls were being made, tears were being shed, and very few thoughts were actually completed. It was a precious moment, much like the day of our referral with Abe.

One of the things I'm thrilled about is the fact that I now have dates on a calendar. I have a timeline for the next year, which is something I haven't had for a long time. Although anything is subject to change, these things are fairly firm, IF our house sells. It looks like we will be appointed in LA in May, travel to VA for 2 months of training in late July, probably go to Vancouver, BC for a 4 month Urban training n September, and finally deploy to Africa somewhere around the 22nd of January, 2012. Needless to say, we are thrilled, terrified, relieved, overwhelmed, and overwhelmingly grateful that we serve a big God whose amazing ways are so much higher than ours!