He Knows Best

The Lord has had me in an interesting place lately, and one thing that I'm learning clearly is that God knows our needs better than we know them ourselves. Let me explain.


As many of you know, we prayed for months that we would get on-campus housing.  We applied last spring, sent numerous e-mails to various offices in the graduate school, stayed up until midnight some school nights to call the right people in Jerusalem, asked in person once we got here, etc., etc. because we thought that living on campus would be the ideal situation for us. We had the understanding that it was probably the cheapest option rent-wise, it would save us on bus fares, and, of course, it was quite convenient that Zach would never be too far from Charis and I.  Despite all of our strivings, though, we were told "no" so many times that we finally laid it to rest and just found something else.

Two days (yes, two days) after we signed the lease for our current apartment, we got an e-mail from the housing office: "A spot in the married housing complex has just opened up; are you still interested?" Really? Really? You couldn't have told us that two days or two months or eight months ago?  We had finalized our lease and were completely locked in for at least 6 months, and at that point there was no turning back. So we e-mailed the office back and told them that we were covered, but thanked them profusely for their timeliness (not really :).

At the time, we were puzzled and somewhat frustrated by the confusing timing of those events. Now that a few weeks have gone by, though, we are beginning to see clearly how the Lord's hand was actually keeping that door closed the entire time so that He could open the one we finally walked through.  First of all, we recently found out that on-campus housing isn't nearly as cheap as we were thinking; in fact, it is substantially more than we are paying now, and it doesn't include the utilities.

Second, the campus/campus housing is pretty isolated in the northwest outskirts of the city, and it doesn't have walking distance access to the real heart of Jerusalem (Ben Yehuda, Jaffa, the Shuk, Davidka Square, etc.) We are within a 5-10 minute walk of all of these places, and as a stay-at-home mom, it has been a HUGE blessing for me to be able to get out with Charis and not feel completely isolated up in a dormitory on the outskirts of the city.  It also gives me (us) a chance to really experience the heartbeat of Jerusalem and to feel like we are really immersing ourselves in the culture.

Third, I think it's been a blessing in disguise for Zach to be able to somewhat "separate" school life and family life.  It's obviously totally different for him to be a student now that he has a wife and daughter, and it's not always easy to get homework done here at home when Charis is crying (or being too cute to resist :).  He has long breaks between classes that he uses to get work done, and it's proven to be a really positive thing for his studies.

All of this brings up an interesting question in my mind about prayer.  While I absolutely think that there are times we need to pray very specifically ("Heal his body of the cancer," or "Please allow me to get this job," or "Provide the money for us to pay our rent this month"), I also think that if you don't know exactly know what to pray, just praying for God's will to be done is always a good thing.  For months we prayed specifically that God would give us on-campus housing, and that whole time the Lord knew He was actually going to provide something even better than what we were praying for.  If nothing else, it's a comfort to know that if I pray for something and the Lord doesn't answer in the way I expect, it certainly doesn't mean He wasn't listening or I just wasn't praying hard enough.  It simply means that He knows my needs better than I do, and His will will be done no matter what.  And that, my friends, is a comforting thought.

I'm clinging to this promise even now with two potential job opportunities that are looming on the horizon. I am praying specifically that He would open the doors, but I am also adding "if it's Your will for me" at the end of that prayer.

And I'm learning to really mean that.