Ever since my husband and I met at the tender young ages of 17 and 18, we’ve always had the amazing ability to talk to each other for hours on end (Read about how we met here). Our personal best was over 9 hours spent on the phone, talking until the sun came up around 7 AM the next morning. Even now, he works remotely from home, and I, of course, am at home with Micah, and we still find endless things to talk about. It was early on in our relationship, during one of those late-night phone calls, that, unbeknownst to us, we began laying the foundations for our family’s future.
I was living on my own in Chicago for med school, and he was with his parents in New Jersey, working after college. As was our custom, every night before going to bed, we would give the other a call to catch up on the day. Somehow, through the course of our conversation, we ended up talking about what we wanted our family life to look like and what our hopes for the future were.
“Ideally,” I said, “I would want to work part-time after residency, so I can be home with the kids, and even home-school them.” “Wow,” he responded. “It’s funny you brought that up, because I had been thinking lately that I wanted our kids to be home-schooled, but I didn’t think it would be possible.”
“You know what would really be crazy…,” I trailed off. “What if we could somehow both stay home with our kids. You know, find a way to make a living that allows us to be home.”
“That would be amazing, but honestly, it’s probably impossible,” DJ replied. “Yeah, an impossible dream.” I said.
“But who knows? Anything is possible with God.” He agreed.
Little did we know, but at that time, we were beginning to shape what our family vision would look like. We were establishing the motivation for our future decisions—decisions regarding career, school, ministry, etc. As we moved on through life, and were faced with choices regarding what job to take, which specialty to apply to, which residency programs to rank highly, these thoughts were what influenced the decisions we made.
Oftentimes in life, we see the outward appearance of the big decisions people make–a new career, the decision to get married, to move to a new town, to get divorced, etc. We don’t realize however, that it’s the little things beneath the surface that manifest themselves in what we see.
With this year coming to an end, I’ve found myself reflecting on not just the choices we’ve made as a family, but also the reasons for those choices. A few months ago, my husband and I felt impressed to clearly delineate our family vision. We wrote it out because we knew it was something not of our own doing. It was a vision God placed on our hearts through the course of events in our lives, and we wanted to be able to refer to it, draw hope from it, and await its fulfillment. And honestly, it’s already begun.
Here we are, already living out our “impossible dream.” The dream we thought would take years to come to fruition, if at all, and we’ve been doing so 7 years ahead of schedule. We’re both home, raising our family!
So, for this New Year, we look forward to the new things God is doing. We look forward to helping others walk in their purpose, while making Christ number one; we look forward to the growth of our family and our love; we look forward to the growth of business and financial wealth; and we look forward to bigger and better.
For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.” Isaiah 43:19 (NLT).
For those who have been following along, first and foremost, I just want to say thank you.
Secondly, this is my last post for the year. We’ll need a chance to focus on what God has in store. However, I look forward to writing in the New Year about all of God’s new things!
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
