Faithfulness Not Happiness

“We are not called to be happy. We are called to be faithful.”

Our Pastor Carl spoke these words over us Sunday morning after he interceded for our family at the altar of the church that we dearly love. We’d asked him to pray for us in preparation for Rich’s departure to Slovenia last Tuesday morning, Rich’s fourth trip in six weeks. We did not share the weariness that we were feeling, but somehow Carl knew. God did too. He used Carl’s words to encourage us.

During that prayer, Rich III noticed for the first time that Carl was missing part of some fingers on one of his hands. When we returned to our seats, he asked me about it. I told him about the accident in the yard that had happened before we moved to Orlando. As I shared the story, I was reminded of the bigger story of Carl and his wife Barb losing their beloved adult son A.J. in a car accident in that same season. The serendipitous timing of Rich’s tender inquiry and Carl’s profound words reminded me again that Carl and Barb choose daily to walk more closely with the Lord than most Christians I know.

When Carl said, “We are not called to be happy. We are called to be faithful, ” I believed him. He has lived that out every day of his ministry, but especially in the last almost decade. I’ve been clinging to his words this week.

I am not going to lie. I thought I was a little more prepared for the last two months. Humble reality check: this almost 39 year old missionary baseball {this month} mom desperately needs Jesus just as much as she did as a 27 year old arriving in France with a 3 month old and three French words under her belt. Sometimes I get lulled to sleep thinking that now that we live in America again, life is easy and happiness is the answer. It’s like a cultural coma.

Then I put my husband on an international flight for the fourth time in six weeks, or my precious Joseph takes three steps forward five steps back with his health issues, or a stranger that I’ve never met heinously wrongs me, or the sister of my heart gets a life-changing medical diagnosis, and I want a quick fix. I want to be happy instead of faithful. Pain-free instead of holy. Polished instead of raw. Checked out instead of present.

But God is too kind to let me live happy or fake or shallow or numb. His plans are so much grander than I could ever dream. In the amount of time that it’s taken my David to sprout his six year molars, Rich has gone from Egypt to Colorado to Orlando to Amsterdam to Orlando to Trinidad to Orlando to Slovenia. In just a few minutes, he will start his final trek back to Orlando. So while the love of my life has been partnering with brave and creative Christians around the globe to deliver sacred spaces for people to hear the life-changing message of the Gospel online, I have gone from independent to dependent once again. I have run as many miles back and forth into the arms of my Savior as my beloved has flown since January.

Rich is usually only gone for a week every other month, but this spring was exceptional. Hear me say that we have not done this since we left France, and it will probably be another seven years before we do it again. {Fingers crossed} But God clearly led us to say yes, and we planned well for it. As it turns out, God wasn’t as concerned about our organizational system as he was about loving me well through this extra full season of ministry. I knew that I wouldn’t be happy every day. But I knew that God would be faithful, and He was…

And He is…