40 Days of Prayer: Hawaii, Day 24

Not much has happened in prayer since last week's entry.  But I do have a few things to journal.

Last Wednesday night at our community group meeting we had a casual night at Starbucks.  Our group was half it's normal size and so we didn't go on with our regular study in 1 John, but we talked a lot and then one of the leaders read the first chapter of (or part of ?) the book, Wild Goose Chase, by Mark Batterson.  Click here to hear an audio clip that's a portion of what I heard read aloud that night.  What she read from the book said a lot of great things, but specifically interesting to me was that the book said, the promptings of the Spirit cannot (or should not) be tamed and how chasing after the Holy Spirit -figuring out the will of God- is a wild, often "illogical" adventure, full of uncertainty and even danger!

I felt the book was talking directly to my heart about Hawaii.  I cannot think of a much more uncertain, wild, "illogical" venture than moving across the Pacific Ocean, away from anyone we know, to one of the most expensive places to live in the United States, where competition between photographers is more fierce than we can imagine and..and...and!  My heart beats with a lot of fear and joy!

I shared about Hawaii and how I feel led there.  And then, like the scratching of the record sound ruins the melody: The leader asked Alex, "So where are you on all this?"  Alex answered, "I don't feel called to Hawaii, not like she does."  And with that I was just lost and felt utterly dejected...

To be very honest (like I've promised to be since the first posts of this blog) I have not hardly prayed about Hawaii since.  I am almost in tears as I type that...

I felt hurt.  Stupid.  Full of it.  Hopeless, even.

It's so hard to put how I feel now into words.  It's a mixture of the above descriptors with some potentially God-given determination to not just give up and walk away from the battle so easily.  But truthfully, I am just a bit,  a lot extremely lost.  This soldier may not be giving up, but this soldier is lost.

So where do I go from here?  God knows I am willing to go and do anything He wants of me.  So is this of me?  Or of Him?  I know that God wants Alex and I to be unified on this, but I don't see how this will happen.  My husband doesn't want to pray about this -not like I think he should.  And so that's obviously a sign that there are bigger issues to work-out right now than just "Should we move to Hawaii?"

Today I am going to begin praying for God to lead me in how to pray for my husband and for me to know how to be unified with him in this.  [For the record, I pray for my husband a lot and for our marriage, but I'll turn up the intensity on it.  And another for the record: I do not pray for God to change my husband or make him agree with me or do what I want -I pray for him to be encouraged and to be empowered to be the man God's calling him to be, etc.]

On Saturday I called the pastor from the church I found online in Hawaii.  I will blog about that the next time I blog about this praying journey.