So much in my head I can’t talk about right now, but let me tell you what I am learning.  Cause this is all over me today.

There are things that I am called to do.  And to me -these things not only make sense, but they are imperatives.  I am equipped to do these things.  Perfectly.  Everyday I am not doing these things, I hurt.  I literally ache to do these things – I stay up at night dreaming of the day I can do these things. And for me – the first born people pleaser, I tend to think that people around me will understand and support my calling and that will somehow even further validate what I am called to do.

Not so.

There are things that Justin and I will do in our lives that will make others uncomfortable.  Will make others mad.  Will make others doubt us.  Will make others think we are crazy.  Will make others think we are bad parents/people/sons/daughters.

And these “others” who we are bothering may not be people at the fringe of our lives.  They may be people INCREDIBLY important to us.  Very center to who we are.

And the trick is to realize that opposition does not actually minimize the accuracy of the calling.  Sometimes we can be called to something or led down a road that NOBODY will understand.  But that road can still be right – can still be God’s best.

I think about Job – sometimes we forget this stuff really happened.  And we judge these stories based on our “church” answers.  So here’s Job, totally righteous, totally pursing God.  And his life falls apart.  Everyone he loves dies.  He loses everything.  And he has these friends who ask him if there is some sin in his life because seriously, he seems cursed.  And we sit here, in 2010, and we judge those friends.  We act like they were unfaithful to Job for asking those questions.  But here’s the deal – they had two choices, they could either doubt Job – doubt his righteousness and suspect a secret sin in his life, or they could imagine a scenario where God and the Devil are literally having some strange cosmic struggle over the life of this one man.  So they either doubt Job, or they believe that God sometimes allows really tough stuff in the life of His kids.

I would have questioned Job.

And these people who are questioning us (and will question us more the further we get down the road to where we are going) – they have that right.  They themselves are working out their salvation with fear and trembling.  But they don’t see the whole picture.  And neither do we.  We only know what we are called to do.  And we don’t know the results of that calling. We may be, like Job, someday sitting in the ruins of a shattered life wondering what on earth this is all about.  But God does see it.  He knows the next step and the next and the next.

So here is all we can do – we can trust our Father’s heart.  We can be as faithful as possible to the calling we have been given.  We can walk this path and not turn to the left nor the right, even when people we love refuse to understand the path we are walking.  And we can trust Jesus to work out the results of that faithfulness.

We may not see it the whole picture.  Our families will not see it.  Our friends will not see it.  But if God is leading, it is there.  And it is good.