Lifelore

It was just about 1 year ago that I first watched the movie “Coffee Shop” on Netflix. I fell in love with this movie. It has a great plot line and a lot of lessons in it. Probably one of the reasons that I love it so much is the line in it that goes something like this: Just because things aren’t working out the way that you had planned, doesn’t mean that they aren’t working out the way that they are suppose to. One year ago this quote really hit home!

As some of you reading this already know, we began our journey of moving to Florida over a year ago. After preparing our house for several months to put on the market, doing tons of research on the state of Florida and specific areas, we put our house up for sale. We even made a family trip down to Florida and scoped out the exact area that we wanted to live in. Everything seemed to be going according to our plan.

My husband and I cleared our schedules for a week and flew to Florida to look at houses and planned to have one bought by the end of the week. That week was exhausting! We looked at probably 25 houses and by the end of the week, we had not found a home that fit our family. We returned to Indiana distraught, confused, and frustrated. Our hopes had been dashed! Within a day of returning home, we decided to pull our house off of the market.

We had many tearful days and did a lot of praying. We couldn’t understand why things hadn’t worked out, other than the fact that it wasn’t the right time. We trusted God that when it was time for us to make the move, that He would make it clear. At that point we didn’t know if the moving delay would be 6 months or 6 years. We continued life as normal and accepted the fact that we were to remain “put” for the time being and we were open to however God wanted to use us while we were still there. We felt like we were in limbo though, not being where we thought we were suppose to be or planned to be, yet feeling like we didn’t belong where we currently were.

Within 3 months, due to many situations and circumstances, we felt God pulling us towards Florida once again and could almost hear Him audibly telling us, “Now is the time. I have used you in this location for the past 21 years, now it is time for Me to use you somewhere else”.

We still do not know for certain why God delayed (what we thought was) our time to move. There may be many reasons, that we do not even see ourselves, and may never know. One thing that numerous people pointed out to us was the timing of Hurricane Irma. If we had moved when we had originally hoped to, we would have only been in our new home state for less than 3 months. That would have been pretty tough for us midwesterners trying to get used to the many differences in Florida to begin with, let alone have Irma hit us immediately.

We sold our house and leased an apartment here in Florida for 3 months. We searched for a house every single evening. We finally found the one! We had searched for a house for 9 months and the house we purchased had only been for sale for 2 days! This house was not even for sale when we were originally looking! God’s timing, once again!

God’s timing is always best! It does not always fall in sync with our timetables, though. The “Coffee Shop” quote (just because things aren’t working out the way that you had planned, doesn’t mean that they aren’t working out the way that they are suppose to) was so true in our case. Last summer our hopes and plans seemed like they were not going to work out at all! Looking in the rearview, though, they were definitely working out the way that they were suppose to, according to God’s plan.

I hope this blog post encourages those of you who are waiting for a plan to work out. Just because you are not seeing immediate results, does not mean that it won’t come to fruition. It may work out differently than you had originally thought  that it would or at a different time altogether. Keep trusting God! If it is suppose to work out, God will make sure that it will. If it doesn’t work out, then God has different plans for you that will go above and beyond what you had ever hoped for or imagined! Keep your head up, keep pushing forward, and continue to seek God’s will!

Written by Kathryn Conrad