‘for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth’.

It is 2 years today since we moved into the little house at Wildflowers.  Looking back 3 years and 3 months to when I left my employment with the South Australian government and launched into the unknown, one thing is very clear.  For all our plans and planning, our dreams and aspirations and our hopes and expectations, we have had to continually affirm that control over the future is something we do not have.

According to my reckoning at the time, we  should all now be living in Queensland, our house in Adelaide sold, and a block of paradise purchased in the tropics. We planned to put several thousand kilometres between us and our perceived troubles in Adelaide.  We should maybe have been in Rockhampton, me relief teaching and doing the odd bit of preaching. Then again I toyed with the idea of teaching English as a second language from home.

Adventure, yes- we travelled by road to Cape York, lots of great stories were created on that trip.  We were all for more of the same.

In short, we were not planning to settle into to a rural agrarian lifestyle in the Adelaide Hills.  A baby came along, our beloved Toyota Lancruiser, which had carried us 25,000 kms without a hitch, was written off by myself at Wildflowers within a month of arriving here, (hard to travel without a vehicle).  Suddenly the canvas was wiped clean and a new picture was being painted.

We bought some animals and planted a garden, we watched the sunsets and sunrises, saw the seasons change and basked in the quietness of this secluded little valley.  We started to set down fine little roots into the beauty of this place.  They have taken greater hold over the past 2 years.

The discovery that two of our children are deaf has caused us to become more consolidated in our present situation.  Such a turn of events never would have entered our minds, how could it?   They need therapy every week, they need stability for a time, we need to be near the services they require so that they can develop and grow.  Deafness in our children is an adventure we had not anticipated!

So all our plans of 2 years ago are in disarray, or so it would seem.  And yet they have been replaced by a more perfect plan, not one of our making but one that God has made and is so much better than the one that we had been dreaming of.  Our perceived problems were of our own making and are now resolved, not by running away but by facing them.  We are learning in a most practical way that nothing is set in concrete, nothing is secure or predictable.  Wildflowers is not ours, but it is ours for a season and that is good enough for us.  The roots are not so deep that the plant cannot be dug out, moved and transplanted elsewhere.

What will tomorrow bring? That is not for us to know but we are in no doubt that whatever comes our way it will be for our good, just as the last two years have been.

‘Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth’ Proverbs 27:1