One of the best things I was ever told was, “Sarah, God’s not trying to trick you.”

I sighed in defeat as I scanned the apartment stuffed full of cardboard moving boxes. It was only 8 in the morning and I could already tell that this was going to be a long day. Matt (my husband) and I had made the decision to move to sunny southern California and now here I stood shoulder deep in our belongings crammed into our new miniature apartment.

Why California you ask? For a job? For family? For fame?

To all of these I say no, except for maybe the last one…if we’re lucky. We’ve moved to California for Matt to continue school. Somebody has to be the smart one in this family & I’m just glad God didn’t ask me (I get to be the cool one). Seriously though, with Matt going to school I am left to do the unpacking and so here I stood, in basketball shorts & an old tie dye shirt, surrounded by boxes. As I began to work on the boxes one by one my mind began to work back to how this all began and the faith we never thought would be tested, faith in our call.

Matt and I began to gain a grasp on the fact that God wanted us to move to California for Matt to go to school shortly after we were married. You’d think realizing this was a call God had given us would be enough to spark the courage we lacked, but it wasn’t. Our hearts were too tied to the obstacles that were in front of us to see clearly the faith God desired to build in us. We began to stress and fret. We didn’t see the solutions coming and we were running out of time! We were defeated, or so we felt.

Thinking on all of this I pulled out books and placed them on our bookshelf. About midway through I pulled out a medium sized, blue jean fabric photo album. My pictures from my iGO trip to Ethiopia, Africa. Looking through those photos I began to remember the faith that God had asked of me that summer.

The summer of 2008 I not only traveled to Ethiopia, Africa, but also to Alaska. How stressful it had been to raise funds for two trips. I remember the excitement of wanting to go mixed with the worry of if it was the right decision. Because of this internal conflict I began to question my desire to travel to both places. Did God really want me to go? If he had indeed called me to go this summer why was this so hard and uncomfortable? I began to become defeated.

When I become discouraged or worried I find the best thing I can do for the situation is to ground myself. I take a step back and try to separate how I feel from what I know. I felt like God was distant and because he was distant I was in the wrong place with this decision (Which can be true sometimes, but not always). I needed to know the facts. Facts like, God desires for good to come to me, not harm. (Ps. 23) God wants me to succeed. (2 Tim. 4:17) God is not indecisive, he knows what he wants for me. (Jer. 29:11)

These facts ground me into the thought of, “If all of this is fact (which it is) then I can state as a fact, God wants me to go.” Knowing that God wants me to go makes all the difference. When I knew that I want to go AND God wanted me to go, I turned a corner. I realized that even though it may be a hard, awkward, uncomfortable, faith stretching mess, I was going do it. I was going to work hard to succeed all the way up to the last moment.

So as I closed the scrapbook and looked out over the apartment, reminded of the internal struggle to have faith in God’s decisions for my (our) life. I must continuously balance emotions with facts, struggling to remind myself that God believes in me and so I should believe in myself. I can do this. I can work hard and try every option because he’s proud of me and is in my corner, and when I get there I can do well and be a success.

If God has called you to go this summer and it gets hard, if it seems like it’s not going to work or you don’t think you’re ready for it, remember, He will be with you. He is not trying to trick you.