Trapeze artist

I'm in a bible study at church. I recommend the book, (and class for that matter) to anyone who is moving or has recently moved....or maybe even anyone in a major transition. It is a ministry run by an incredible lady from my home church, Susan Miller. Her ministry is called Just Moved Ministries and the book we are doing is called "Moving On After Moving In." I'm only 3 chapters in, but I've cried through all I've read so far - because it gets right to the core. :)

In one of the chapters for this week, she quotes an excerpt from Paul Tournier's book A Place for You :

"I thought of the trapeze artists, swinging on their trapezes high up under the dome of teh circus tent. They let go of one trapeze just at the right moment, to hover for a moment in the void before catching hold of the other trapeze. As you watch, you identify yourself with them and experience the anxiety in the middle of the way, when they have to let go of their first support and have not yet seized the seccond...it is the middle-of-the-way anxiety. It is the void in which they are going to find themselves before being able to seize a new support.

All this to say, we must always be letting go...leaving one place in order to find another, abandoning one support in order to reach the next, turning our backs on the past in order to thrust wholeheartedly toward the future."

I guess I just didn't ever think I'd be stuck in that void for so long! But that's where faith comes in. Susan goes on in her book to point out that just as the trapeze artists have a net waiting to catch them "just in case", that is what God is ALWAYS doing for us. So if we do get stuck in the middle-of-the-way void, and do happen to fall, we're going to land in our safety net.

So what did I learn this week????

- God places us where we are in order to prepare us for what He wants us to become
- Accept being where you are
- Let go of expectations that you'll move back! - that one really hit me strong....I'm not ready to let go of this expectation yet, but I guess I will supposedly be there some day.