It's our story.
It's the story that has slowly emerged in our lives over the last 11 months.
We hope you are encouraged by it.
If you don't want to wait for 7 days….you can listen to this podcast (33 minutes) of us telling our story to our church congregation.
Part 3 - Resistance
For the next three weeks, Heidi and I began
to talk about Fresno. We didn’t believe that God was necessarily asking us to
move there, but that He was asking us to talk about it. I suppose that makes
sense. We hadn’t talked about it for nearly a decade. In those three weeks, and
in those daily conversations, our true thoughts about Fresno began to emerge.
In particular, Heidi began to say things like, “I don’t want to move to Fresno” and “Fresno feels like a step backwards or a step down.” It was phrases
like that that were repeated over and over for weeks. Finally, one night in our
living room, I asked Heidi, “For weeks,
I’ve heard you resist Fresno, calling it a ‘step backwards’ and a ‘step down.’
Where does that come from?” It was what she said that surprised me. She
said, “I’ve been thinking about that very
question. I’ve noticed the way I’ve spoken about Fresno, and I think I’ve begun
to understand where that comes from.” She said, “I have to tell you a story…
“I
graduated from high school as a valedictorian, and got a full-ride scholarship
to Cal State Long Beach. A beautiful campus, in beautiful southern California,
and in a coastal climate. In many ways, it was a step up. In my final year of
university, before getting my teaching credential, I made a list of all the
things I wanted in a husband. Two weeks after I graduated, I married the man of
my dreams. Two weeks after that, we moved internationally to Canada; none of my
friends did this – it felt really special. We didn’t just move anywhere, we
moved to Vancouver, a place where everyone agrees that it’s one of the nicest
cities in the world. And not just anywhere in Vancouver, we moved to Kits
Point, the wealthiest postal code in Canada, a half-block from the beach.”
But it was what she said next that was most
important. It was the fundamental truth in her story. She continued,
“It’s
like I’ve gotten used to upward mobility. The idea that everything in my life
needs to be a little bit nicer than the last thing. I let that idea creep in
and go unchecked the first time I moved to southern California. That’s why
Fresno feels like a step backwards or down. It doesn’t agree with the narrative
that’s been subconsciously driving my life.”
It was those words, “upward mobility” that
sparked a memory of my own. I’d forgotten this story until the moment she said,
“upward mobility.” I paused her.
I said, “I have to tell you a story of my own. I just remembered it.” I
said,
“When
I was 18 years old I had an experience that was profoundly significant for me.
I was listening to a speaker talk about God’s love for the poor. And something
of what he said burned inside my heart. It brought me to tears. I was
embarrassed to cry in such a public setting, so I ran out of the auditorium and
found myself on an overpass, watching cars travelling north and travelling
south. The cars travelling north were heading to north Fresno, a wealthier part
of the city. The cars travelling south were heading to south Fresno, a poor
part of the city. Watching these cars, some running north and some south, I
sensed God was saying,
‘Joseph, I’m going to bless you whatever
you choose. Are you going to serve me in the north? Or are you going to serve
me in the south?”
I
remember what I said to the Lord that day, watching cars and weeping. Turning
my eyes towards heaven, facing downtown, I yelled, “I will go south!”
I suppose I agreed to something with God
that day. It was a story I had forgotten, but it had been driving my life since
that time. As Heidi and I juxtaposed our two stories that night in the living
room, we realized that the subtext of our lives were driving in not just
different – but opposite – directions. One subconsiously being driven by upward
mobiity; the other being subconsiously driven towards downward mobility. But
it’s what happens next that is most important.
Part 4 (tomorrow) – An Incredible Change
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