Motto #1
I have a few sayings that I keep with me as I try to make it through this crazy life. I use them so much that I am sure you could ask any number of my friends what I say when life gets tough they would tell you one of these. These sayings are things that stuck with me for years. Each one will come from a different part of my life but this one will be my first on the list of Willow’s Survival Statements.
ASSESS, ADAPT, MOVE ON.
Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my Dad on mission trips. He and I were a team. He, being the amazing pastor He is, planned lots of outreach. When there was someone in trouble yoiu could count on him to have a group of people to help you up. When he did this I always took the opportunity to go with him. I loved helping people and meeting new people. This was long before my health got way worse. I was able to take off and not worry. There is one particular mission trip that was on our way to Joplin after the horrendous life altering tornado that destroyed their town. It was something I had never imagined in my life. The damage was unfathomable. At one point there were so many groups there to help that they had run out of places to send people. Not for lack of work but for the ability to only manage so many groups of people etc. We had gotten up and ready and showed up at the first aid setup and said we want to help.
They told us that at the moment they weren’t sure what jobs to send people towards or what people should be going where. THey were overwhelmed with outpouring of love. Have you ever been in a position where you were doing all the things, everything that God would want you to do but you can’t get the puzzle pieces to fit. We were there, with a group of people ready to move debris and help people have a safe place to live but they didn’t have a place for us. In our brains it just doesn’t make sense. How can hey not take more help, there was clearly work to be done. Sometimes we are ready and God wants us to hold up for a second and allow Him to prepare a place for us.
We walked away confused. It was more of a situation where we had what we knew could be used but they didn’t have a place for us and it was confusing because it was so obvious people needed help. However, Christ wanted us to be at the right place. I am so thankful that God told us to pause. He called us to regroup. My Dad decided to have people follow behind his car and we were going to just drive around until we saw someone who could use help. As we were driving the time ticked by and not finding a place or someone to help was wearing on the group. People wanted to be of use and the day was ticking by and we had no way to help. My dad pulled his car over to the side of the road and everyone followed. We all got out of the vans and my Dad said let’s circle up, have a talk, and go to the Lord.
It was standing in this random yard with a group of people I have known for various lengths of time that God would pass one of the most important lessons of my life through my Dad and onto me. He circled us up and said this general point “Sometimes we can put boots on the ground for Christ and be ready to go but God isn’t ready for us so we must hold tight. He has plans that we can’t understand or see yet. He was working on something that we cant understand.”
My Dad starts praying over the group and He goes a direction I haven’t seen him go that often. He begins “Lord, we are here and we are ready to do your work. We have driven hours from our houses’ and we are ready to go where you need. We are ready and Lord we want to see you move. We want to hear you lead us to someone who is waiting on a sign. A sign that leads them to you. We are asking that you let us be an answer to someone’s prayers. Let us be an answer to prayer through you. In the next 20 minutes you are going to lead us to the correct person. The person we were supposed to be here for. The person that was the reason we came out here for. Amen”
He wasn’t hiding, He was asking God to make it happen and soon. He called Christ to jump up and tell us where to go. I had never expected him to tell God what he needed like that. It was wild. It was powerful. It was scary because what if God didn’t show up in that 20 minutes. We ended the prayer and I was talking to my Dad as we all were walking and praying around. He told me “Willow, sometimes in life you have to ASSESS the situation, ADAPT to the new variable, and then MOVE ON. He said Willow, we don’t know the extent of these situations, we don’t have a place to go but we have 20 + workers and WE can’t do anything about it.. only God can. So we need to move on” We were about to hit the 20 minute mark. It had to have been 19 minutes and some change when one of our group members got a call.
We were NEEDED.
We loaded up and headed to this sweet older lady’s house. I honestly shouldn’t even say house. The walls were gone. She had hidden in the closet next to her bathroom and all of the walls besides the closet walls that she was in were ripped down. She was literally in the only space that stayed safe. Talk about seeing God. We spent the day helping get property to a place where the people who come in with the machines could begin their work. There is a lot more that goes into disaster clean up than a lot of us realize. It isnt just putting on the right clothes and shoes and going to the site of the disaster ready to get dirty. There is an organization to the chaos and it is important not to disrupt the system that the people who are trained on this are using.
This has become the mantra to my life and I truly believe that God was setting this moment up for the health trauma that was coming my way in the next 2.5 years. Assess, Adapt, Move on. In life, you can have a beautiful plan that God would be proud of, your family would be proud of, the community you live in would appreciate but if you haven’t waited to have it God ordained you may be missing out on a powerful opportunity. Assess the situation, it may be different now but that is okay. Adapt to that, use the new information for the better and do what you can and then MOVE ON. Don’t ruminate on it. sometimes we can ruin a perfectly great thing by sulking and overthinking it, dont.
xoxo,
Willow Ann
P.S. When I met Michael we were having a deep conversation earlier on in our relationship. i told him about this mantra my dad taught me and how important it was to me. He looked at me and said that’s funny. I remember thinking “its not funny! its powerful, what do you mean?” He continued on to say in the army they had a saying that was drilled into their heads that was “Assess, Adapt, Overcome”. This special connection adds to the many reasons I know God handpicked us for one another. This is one of my favorite memories and it wouldn’t be right not to share it with you all!
