Six months ago, my dream of living in Italy as a missionary was turned upside down.  Since then, so many of you have prayed for us, encouraged us, and supported us financially.  But there’s an elephant in the room.  Maybe you’ve known all along and been gracious enough not to scold. The fact is all this was preventable.

We could have avoided this heartache and upheaval if we’d done our homework more thoroughly.  I’m not saying we didn’t do our homework.  We researched countless aspects of our move overseas.  But we missed a critical one. We lived overseas in the past, and we assumed things based on our previous experience that didn’t apply to this situation.

We didn’t know what we didn’t know.  Looking back, it’s embarrassingly clear that anybody could have spent 10 minutes online and discovered we were in for trouble.

Anyone could argue our best intentions to listen to God and glorify Him were sabotaged by our failure to use common sense.  They could say we squandered our savings, traumatized our kids, and wasted six months of our lives on a fool’s errand.

After I invited all of you to watch and see what God would do if we listened and obeyed.

But there’s more to the story.  My husband’s employer didn’t fulfill her legal responsibility. Why did God allow this, without giving us any inkling that something was wrong?

And why is our failure good news for you?

I’m confident no one reading this would have made the same mistake.  But if one mistake is all that stood between us and serving God “successfully”, and it’s one mistake you’d never make, then what’s preventing you from walking with God into the unknown and succeeding?

The even better news is that God used this failure for his glory.  I’ll write more about this next week, but for now let me say we marvel at everything God has done, the places we’ve seen, and the people we’ve met. None of it would have been possible if we hadn’t failed so spectacularly.  I can’t say conclusively, and I may never know…but what if our failure wasn’t a failure? What if this is what God had in mind all along?At worst, our story illustrates that God will be with you, even in the aftermath of your greatest failure, when you risk it all for Him.  At best it shows that God knows our hearts better than we do, loves us boundlessly, and ordains adventures that surpass anything we can imagine.

By all means, do your homework.  And DO leap boldly into the unknown when God invites you.

You won’t regret it.