but I follow after

Magdalena de Kino, Sonora is a place that has relatively little significance if you're not AC. If you are though, going there probably means that instead of signing your name on the wall in the dorms for the first time, you're looking for the two or three other places you've signed your name in previous years. For me, it meant searching for a name that's no longer mine. Since my last spring break trip to CVE in 2010, I've been privileged to begin sharing life with Grant, which, of course, means that I'm not Hannah Waibel anymore. It's one of many identity changes that I've experienced in recent years, and much of "who I am" is still unknown to me even at this point. In fact, there's a lot of things about "who I am" right now that I don't really like, and I know that God wants to keep molding and shaping me as well. But I'm grateful that He's willing to redeem who I have been and help me become more and more the woman He wants me to be.

Thinking about moving after these past few years on the mission field often leaves me wondering if I've done enough, if I have fulfilled God's calling for our lives, and if I'm prepared to move on. More often than not, I find myself struggling against a sense of failure as I analyze certain relationships and wonder how I could have done things differently.

But Philippains 3:8-14 gives me great comfort: "and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." And I'm reminded that God is just as much present in our calling to return to the U.S. as He was in our calling to go to Mexico, and He's willing to redeem me and my circumstances for His glory. Our weekend in Magdalena offered a glimpse into what it will look like to mix our past in Mexico with our future in the U.S., and I can truly say that God is good.

to be continued...