Together Thomas and I are going to share our “Family Life” story. As we continue through this process I will do my best to post updates. To fully explain where we are now, we have to go back about 5 years….
Thomas:
About 5 years ago, Jamie and I went to a marriage conference called “Weekend to Remember” with some friends thinking we would be getting a little refresher to our marriage. Little did we know the seeds that would be planted and the direction God would lead us. We had a great time and I know that we learned a lot and turned a new leaf in our marriage. Towards the end of the conference, they announced that they would have a meeting to go over the ministry of family life if anyone was interested in becoming a missionary and working with Family Life. At that moment, I felt God tell me to go to the meeting. Shortly after that session, we were given a time as a couple to talk. During this session, I told Jamie that I felt like I was being led to go into the ministry with Family Life. We went to the meeting and that is where our journey began.
Jamie:
Although not interested in EVER moving away from Tyler I could tell that Thomas felt VERY strongly that God was calling him to do this. Being the planner that I am (and used to be even more so) I was not thrilled that God was changing my “perfect plan” that I already had. I did my best to put my heart into it and found that I was a little bit excited about going on this new adventure with my husband. So we began the process by filling out the paperwork. Soon after we did a phone interview and ended up being invited to Little Rock, Arkansas to interview in person at Family Life. This was the final step before we said an absolute yes and began fundraising…
Thomas:
At that time, we either got cold feet or Satan worked his way into our minds. We decided to stop the process with Family Life. We did continue on serving in church in many different capacities over the next several years and recently started up a small group in our current church.
Jamie:
I was scared. I had never lived more than an hour away from my parents and I knew that missionaries don’t make a lot of money (the thought of asking people to support us made me nauseated). I had just finished ultrasound school and was told that I wouldn’t be able to have an ultrasound job. So to sum that up, I was selfish. I used the ministries that we were getting involved in at our own church as my reason. Maybe God simply wanted us to be willing to serve him. We could do that at our own church, where we were already comfortable, right?
Thomas:
Since then we have had several issues revolving around my job that had always made me think I was like Jonah. I prayed countless times and spent time diligently seeking Him for guidance. I internally fought my battle thinking I had missed my call in life and I was doomed to a life of turmoil. At times I even felt like God had turned His back on me.
Jamie:
I found a job I was happy with and began my perfect plan: buy a house, have a baby, when that one turns a year old get started on the next one! J Right before I found out that I was pregnant with Adah is when all of the turmoil with Thomas’s career began. Ten days after she was born I found us moving to Houston for Thomas’s job.
Thomas:
Fast forward, Jamie and I are in Houston. We are currently going through the worst two years of our lives in dealing with loss of multiple jobs and the stress of financial burden of being out of work. I had recently found some stability in the workplace as I had become a medical device distributor. It is still a huge uphill battle with a lot of discouragement.
Jamie:
Here we are in Houston and having such a hard couple of years. I am now working 2 part time jobs (one of which is from home, praise God) and I am tired. I am tired of busyness, working, stressing about money, and having to tell my kids that they will have to wait b/c mommy has to work. At this point I am just trying to survive and often forgetting to lean on God in order to do that. The planner in me is coming back out and I am just trying to get everything done. Then came the sermon about Jacob wrestling with God. It was as if Pastor Dave was talking directly to me and me only. I knew that I was the one who was trying to do everything on my own and forgetting to ask God for help and guidance. As if the feeling in my heart wasn’t enough to prove that message was for me, Satan immediately began to attack. Thomas was at home sick that day so as I am trying to get both kids out of the church building Nate throws one of his biggest fits EVER. SO embarrassing when perfect strangers are offering to help with your child who is attracting the attention of everyone in the building, and not in a good way! I continued to pray that week seeking God and Satan continued to try to put me in a bad mood. I am ashamed to say how often he won.
The next Saturday after being a grouch to my husband I decided that the week had been ridiculous and I had to stop letting Satan win. I was going to work on myself and seek and pray more than I ever had before. That Sunday, I suddenly started thinking about Family Life. I had not though about it in 5 years and it was ALL I could think about. I spent the week trying to decipher if this was God talking to me or just me with some crazy idea for a change. I prayed all week about whether I should talk to Thomas about it. I finally resolved that if God was trying to lead me to Family Life, He didn’t need me to tell Thomas, but I did need Him to tell Thomas in order to affirm His voice to me. So I told no one.
Thomas:
On a recent trip to Tyler, Jamie and I had the rare opportunity to talk while the kids were sleeping in the car. We started talking about work and what was going on. It was nice to just talk without interruptions. As we were talking about work, I expressed my frustrations with work at the current moment. During a silent moment she said, “what are you thinking?” I outright told her that I think we missed out mark with not going to Family Life. It was at this point that Jamie revealed to me the struggle she had been going through for the past week. That was all the confirmation we needed. We filled out the form on line at Family Life to restart the process that night. It is our goal to serve God by being missionaries working with Family Life.
Jamie:
I am so excited! We both feel the greatest peace like a weight has been lifted off of us! We had our initial phone interview this week. The only thing that is currently standing in our way before we can move forward is that since the conference we went to 5 years ago we have had major financial struggles and now have debt that we have to get rid of. It is a big job but we are fully confident that God has called us to join Family Life and God will provide a way for us to do it. We are just hoping that He doesn’t make us wait as long as we made Him wait!
Thomas and Jamie:
So we ask you as our friends and family to pray for us during this journey. We do ask for prayer that God will start preparing our hearts for His work ahead of us. You can also pray that God will allow us to eliminate debt quickly. We can’t wait to see what God is going to do next.
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