Pioneer, Pioneer
Keep pressing onwards beyond your fears
And only your Father goes before you to your own frontier
You’re a Pioneer
Uncharted wilderness stretches before you
And you thrive on going where no one has gone
Still it gets lonely when darkness rears
So sing by the fire until the dawn
You travel light and you travel alone
And when you arrive nobody knows
But your Father in heaven, He is glad you can go
Cause those who come after you will need the road
And what you have done, others will do
Bigger and better and faster than you
But you can’t look back, you gotta keep on pressing through
There’s a wilderness pathway and it’s calling you
Calling you, calling you
Keep pressing onwards, you can’t stay here…
And only your Father goes before you to your own frontier
You’re a Pioneer
(song, “Pioneer”, by Rick Pino)
As we embark on 2022, there are a lot of new beginnings for our family, one of the major ones is starting a non-profit called, “Walking With The Lion”. After serving with many different types of ministries since our college days, we were prompted to finally start something new. We had been back from Australia for a few years, praying and seeking the Lord what to do, and through different circumstances, fasting, praying, and His still small voice, He spoke and said its time!
When we first got back to the states, one of the directives from the Lord was to find a home base, however Timothys dad passed a month after we returned unexpectedly and all of a sudden, we were in charge of an estate and selling/emptying two homes in Syracuse, NY. Not only that, but we had our third just a month later, and to add to that COVID comes. Isn’t that life though? Full of curve balls that we don’t expect and new stresses in life? The question is, how do we handle them as they come, as they are like our thermometer check for how we are doing in the Lord. Timothy and I thought we would come home from Australia, and start looking for a home base right away, and we did start our journey, but got the devastating news when we were at the furthest point away, Houston, Texas. Everything changed in a moment, but God’s grace was there. I was late in my third trimester and had to jump on an airplane from Houston, TX to Syracuse, NY, help Timothy with the wake/funeral plans, and then we flew back to Texas, only to drive for another 3 days back up to NY in middle of winter.
No one knows how much work an estate entails until they become the administrator of one, and between the newborn and driving back and fourth from Albany to Syracuse most of 2020 in the middle of covid, it definitely was not easy for us. Joshua was waking up every few hours to feed-for the first entire year of His life. We were able to squeeze in a few road trips south to South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida, but boy, was it hectic for us!
In the midst of all this, we were seeking God for direction, and it almost seemed as if He was silent on our next “directive”, so we just kept doing the things we needed to do practically, the estate, homeschooling, road trips, a 2 month ministry school, and finally, after about two years, when we knew we were supposed to reside in Florida, He spoke and said its time to start something new. Why Florida? I can’t tell you as we don’t know many people at all, but we trust and know God will make that clear in the future.
Pioneering is never easy, as the song lyrics say, “Uncharted wilderness stretches before you, And you thrive on going where no one has gone, Still it gets lonely when darkness rears, So sing by the fire until the dawn“.
So now that I have shared some of the grey road before the clarity of pioneering, I want to encourage you that sometimes God waits to speak to us for a reason, sometimes there are practical reasons, other times its reasons we don’t know, but what do we do in the meantime? We wait, we spend time with God, we don’t focus on getting an answer, but we live life until God decides to speak. And honestly, there are times where we move forward, as long as we have peace about it. Before we went to Australia, the Lords direction was, “Go do a DTS with YWAM in Sunshine Coast, Australia in the fall”. Other times, He has said “choose”. As long as we are bearing fruit and having relationship, it doesn’t have to look a certain way!
Please pray and encourage us if you remember as we embark in this new journey, not exactly knowing what its going to look like, but knowing its time as we began 2022!!