The God of Light and Comfort

A pretty amazing thing happened in our family yesterday.  What started as something very frightful and disturbing had, we feel, a very positive end.  In our training in Texas we learned a lot about the dark spiritual side of many of the tribal religions in Africa.  This is a topic that we tend to avoid in America as we don’t often feel like we are exposed, in an obvious way, to the spiritual world.  In fact, I tend to kind of brush it aside as if it is not real.  But it is very real and we were given training to help us understand when we encounter these things.  Well, we are not in Africa yet, but we have already been learning a little more about these Spiritual things.

Ever since we moved onto the ship Adalynn has been screaming every time we try to put her to bed at night.  Adalynn has always been a great sleeper.  She has slept in 7 different beds in the last 2 months and always takes a couple days to fully adjust but after that she gets right back into her routine.  She has been known to cry at night when we put her down, especially in a new place, but we had never heard her scream like she has since we’ve been here.  Her screams were not just screams of discontent but rather screams of fear.  We have had to lie in her room with her until she goes to sleep.  Several nights it has taken several hours to get her to go to bed.  It has been totally exhausting for us, and also very worrisome.

I am not one to automatically blame “the dark side” for things like this, but in this case I felt strongly that there was something spiritual going on.  Something was making her room feel scary.  She was fearful of something that we could not understand.  We wondered if we had made a bad decision to come here.  We wondered why God would call us to this and allow it to be so difficult.  We doubted the direction that we had so clearly heard to leave everything and move our family here.  We spent hours praying and many tears were shed.  Everything else felt right, but this.

Yesterday we invited one of the chaplains and another woman to come into our cabin and pray over Adalynn’s room.  It was a very powerful time and both women really felt like something supernatural was going on to make her fearful.  As I was standing praying I felt an amazing peace and security knowing that the Lord is bigger than darkness and He is more powerful than anything else.  Satan will try anything to discourage us and this is exactly what he was trying to do.  But the Lord is bigger.  We have no reason to fear.

I know it may take some time for Adalynn to totally feel comfortable here, but she went to bed last night and tonight without screaming and that felt like such an amazing answer to prayer.  We feel so encouraged.  We know we are supposed to be here.  One of the women told us that she felt God telling her that He has a special plan just for Adalynn here.  She’s not here just because John and I were called here but he is going to use her in a specific way too!!  That was SO amazing to hear and to realize!  It made us so aware of how faithful we HAVE to be in relying on God’s awesome power!  We cannot do this alone.  We will fail.  Only God in us can do this.

I have not felt God’s power in quite that way before and instead of discouragement I feel such a sense of strength and confirmation of our calling to this ship.  It makes me so excited to see what God has in store for our family.  It makes me excited to know that he plans to use all four of us to bring glory to Him!

Some pictures from our week:

 Reading to Cora!

Cora chillin on the deck 

 Adalynn loves the lello swings on Deck 7.  There are also riding toys and a play house (in the distance).  On Deck 8 there are more little cars and a slide.  It's a great place for them to play but it is so dirty. . .

note the black face and legs!

All our walls are magnetic and Adalynn thinks that is pretty amazing!  We think so too.  We use magnets to hang everything on the wall. 

Play-dough!

We turned our couch to face the windows and we love watching the big boats and bips (ships) come into the port. 

3 months!

Look what I can do!!!