Celebrating God's Plan

The thing that seems to cause the biggest anxiety in my life is my children. As their mom I worry over the little details and I often have to take these concerns to the Lord. I thought it would get easier as they got older, but I find the opposite is true. The problems are bigger and I no longer have any control.  Yikes!

Stephen finished up his college career in December and will be walking at graduation in May.  But since December he has been home and facing the overwhelming task of finding a job.  He would like to be a youth pastor because he doesn't feel like he has the experience or age to be a lead pastor in a church.  However, other than camp jobs, he really doesn't have a lot of experience at this.  His degree was in pastoral ministries so it's going to limit the type of jobs he can get.

His student loans are going to kick in when June comes around so he really needed to find something quickly. Unfortunately, we do not have an extra bedroom and when Emily is home he is camped out on the futon in our sunroom.  When she is away he partially moves into her bedroom so he can have a bit of privacy and I'm not going crazy with the mess.  But it's not ideal.

Anyway, I've been anxious about it, but have been praying that the Lord would just help me to stay calm and cool and be able to butt out! Because Stephen tends to procrastinate when he is overwhelmed there have been many days when I want to push him along the path of job searching and working on his application for ordination.  But he does not respond well to his mother telling him what to do. lol

Because he's looking for a youth pastor position, it's been hard to find a job that he knows is only going to be temporary.  About 3 weeks ago, I got a message out of the blue from a Facebook friend, asking me if I knew of anyone looking for a temporary job counting dogs for our town.  Apparently, they need to keep track of them because people are supposed to license their dogs.  It's only about a two month job.  Anyway, the town board met on Tuesday night and voted to hire Steve. 

In the meantime, there is something in the works that would be a one year internship as a youth pastor in our district. They provide housing and there is some district money for him to get paid a bit. Again, this was through a Facebook message that a friend sent me asking if Steve would be interested. So another totally out-of-the-blue, God thing. Stephen is traveling there on March 4 to preach and meet with the board so prayers would be appreciated.

I'm celebrating today the fact that God has a plan for my child and is working out all the details in Stephen's life (without any help from me! 🤣)