Looking Back on the First Year

We’re now three days over living in the Netherlands for one full year and I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it.  If I could sum up the last year in one word, I think that word would have to be “learning”.

Its not just that I’ve been reading some great books and articles or that I’ve been hearing some great messages–though both are true.  Its like I’ve finally hit some sort of wall where what I’m learning is forcing its way out in to life.  Where learning apart from living has come to be fraudulent.

Learning, or learning that I’m proud to share at least, usually says something to the world about my having mastered something.  “Let me share with you what I have learned.”  The learning of the last twelve, and especially the last eight to ten months, however

has demonstrated anything but mastery.  And so, it is not mastery to which I now call others, but learning and journeying along with me.

“How do I incarnate Christ?  How would his life come infiltrate my parenting, my finances, my time management, my leisure, my work?  How does this newly implanted identity in Christ work its way out in to the corners of my life?”

Though maybe at one time I had thought my purpose in coming to Holland was to train a youth pastor, I’m now finding my purpose to be more faithfully expressed in planting these kinds of questions in the minds and hearts of others.  Then it is my job to continue journeying with those in whom the seed germinates and takes root.

And that, quite simply, is how I would sum up this year’s progress: we have found some with whom we can journey.  Some with whom we can be inadequate.  Some with whom we can seek, ask and knock in search of the One who will answer and seed more questions himself.

-JW

PS – Enjoy my favorite video of Jude laughing and pics from the four seasons. 🙂

Now That The Family Is All Here…

Something happened the minute Jude was born. Well, a lot of things happened, but there was one especially that I did not expect. Of course these last nine months Kate and I have been expecting to become parents. We have been expecting to have our lives turned upside down by this third member of our little family.  After all, what have we been working for and preparing for this whole time?

Growing up I remember getting that “It is finally happening” feeling anytime something big was just around the corner.  Whether it was a vacation, a mission trip or even just summer, there always seemed to come this moment where nothing else stood between me and whatever it was that I was about to do.

Jude made that moment happen.  It is hard to explain, but somehow the mental leap that happened when he was born seems to have catapulted us nearly onto the plane that will take us to our home these next three to five years.  The family is together, the Lord is providing the funds, we are learning the ropes with Worldventure and now more than ever we continue to prepare to leave in just a few more weeks. Though we still have eight weeks until we plan on leaving, it now feels like the moment is finally here and we are indeed, truly getting ready to move to Holland.  What a journey.