Regarding Lily

Florida, finally, felt like it held a future for us and it looked good. So, so good. Sean was fulfilled and doing what he loved and what he was created to do. Lily and I had been blessed with Treasures, an amazing homeschool group that we plugged into, we had prayed for months to find a community just like it! We also had exercise class with our dear friend, Susan, who was wonderful enough to lead us and teach us. We ‘wogged’ (think between a speed walk and a jog) around campus and the alligator pond and enjoyed the Florida sun. We had purpose and felt we were right where we should be. Ahhh. Just glorious. I didn’t have the ‘wanderlust’ that normally followed me around. I didn’t necessarily want to ‘settle down’ there, but my eyes weren’t on the horizon like they always seemed to be. I knew I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. It felt right. I knew I was super lucky when I was asked to work part time as the school secretary on campus. So much fun and so rewarding.

Then Sean and a few other employees started to notice things that didn’t seem right. Sean approached his immediate supervisor about the issues. He was supported and encouraged to take the issues straight to the director. After a lot of back and forth dialogue between the director and himself, Sean was fired and told we had two weeks to vacate our house, as long as there was “no drama.” A reference to us going quietly and not raising a red flag. The director told Sean I could keep my job but told Sean he understood if that would make me feel uncomfortable. We were devastated. I didn’t want to leave. Sean didn’t want to leave.  

Our community gathered around us; prayed and cried and helped me pack. I have joked to many people that had they not shown up, I would still be standing in the middle of the kitchen, paralyzed with shock and hurt. Not evening knowing where to begin. We agonized over what to do. We prayed and heard God, “As long as this director is in leadership here, there is no place for Sean.” We knew that was true. So, we took a day and went to Panama City Beach, watching the waves trying to let them lull us into relaxing a little. Sean prayed. We were supposed to go to Montana and be with our friends. (Montana, the catalyst for helping us make the decision to run to Florida in the first place. Of course God was instructing us to go there!!) These were our directives. And we had ideas about what they meant. We had ideas about what God was going to do with us regarding these words. All our ideas about what the directives meant were completely and totally wrong.

We had worked so hard to stay in Florida (way too hard), for the first time in years, we didn’t want to move; anywhere. We didn’t want to run. And now, quiet harshly and almost immediately, we were being thrown out of Florida and sent to a place we did not want to go. To give up the beautiful swamps, and natural springs and the gulf coast for, what was to us, the wild barrens of eastern Montana. Oh man. We wanted to see our friends, but we didn’t want to go there.

We were told it was wrongful termination and we could fight it. We prayed, we did what God asked and then we let go. Our wonderful friends were literally, the hands and feet of Jesus. They brought us food, helped me sell my furnisher, packed our house, cried with us, didn’t leave our side. It’s an odd and sickening feeling to live where you are not welcome. It’s the most amazing feeling, though, to have friends come and be with you while you’re being rejected and dismissed.

We were so loved all the way through that process. And when it was time to go to Montana, we had an envelope with $1,000 in it, tucked under the windshield wiper of our jeep. That’s Jesus. That’s love. God knew we needed not just finances to perform a move that quickly, but we needed to know people saw what was happening to us. And not just see it but care. I worried for just a second, about how being fired and essentially kicked out of our house by a pastor would affect Lily. I was silly to worry about it even for a second. The thing about Lily is, she is completely awesome. She doesn’t equate pastors with God. Smart girl. Of course, Sean and I being her firsthand experience with pastors and ministry workers, Lily knew we could be just as difficult and confused and sometimes just as callous, as anybody else. And just like she had said to me, when she was eight years old, and I was really struggling with God, “Mom, God wouldn’t let it happen if He wasn’t going to make something good come out of it.” Amen. Thank you, God, for Lily.