Wow! A whole year…a whole year in Vancouver…and what a year it’s been. 
I won’t mince words on this one. It’s been hard. Hard in all the ways I expected and plenty I didn’t. Moving while pregnant. Hard. Navigating a new city, a new country. Hard. Feeling desperately alone while simultaneously being around my rambunctious kids all day. Hard. Guiding my children through their own emotional upheavals. Hard. Pushing past my introverted tendencies and vulnerably reaching out to try and make new friends for myself and my daughters. Hard.

But we were made for hard things. And not only were we made for them, we should expect them.

Beyond the hard things, there has also been healing. Healing within myself and relationships in ways I didn’t even realize I was broken. A healing I’m still in the midst of.

The Lord has brought us to the wilderness, literally and figuratively. He has stripped away any sense of comfort or false security and left me to examine the vastness of my own soul. He has allowed me to sit in the discomfort of my aloneness, a solitude that is altogether uneasy yet obviously so so needed in my journey. He revealed, ever so slowly my complete and utter need for Him and only Him.

He reminds me again and again that trust isn’t the momentary act of stepping on a plane with a one-way ticket in hand. Trust is showing up everyday and actively choosing to surrender to Him, even on the days I feel like I’m crumbling inside trying as I might to hush the nagging whispers of doubt…especially on those days.

I’m experiencing all the feelings rolled up into this one year mark. On one hand, I expected to be further along in this journey…further along emotionally with friendships more rooted, further along in feeling like I belong or if not belong at least blending in a little more, further along in my acclimation to this similar enough but not quite the same as home culture I find myself in.

On the other hand, when I step back and objectively look at all our family has been through this year I’m surprised how well we’re coping. We’ve adjusted. We made a few new friends. We’ve added another little Padley to the mix and he has slid on into family life just fine. Its amazing actually.

So that’s where I am. A slight peak into my heart, my family and this mission we’ve been called to. Its been a bumpy ride for sure and we have not escaped unbruised. Even so, the dust is settling and I’m beginning to see that we are braver and more resilient than we ever realized. We can do hard things. We were made to do the hard things. And yet amidst the hard, there is joy. There is healing. All by His grace. You were made for hard things too, my friends.