Full

I want to tell you a story.  Its a story that’s really not mine, its just something I had the honor and privilege to be a part of in some small way.  In order to fully tell the story, I need to write about some of the things that have happened in our family this summer.

At the beginning of June, we added two littles to our family and the Galloway Five became the Galloway Seven.  While not every part of the transition was easy or pretty, we fought through the hard things and fused a new rhythm for our family.

We traveled all over the country.  All five littles became junior rangers in six national parks, we saw the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.  We saw rain…goodness, I didn’t realize how deeply I’d missed the rain. We saw family, threw a baby shower, got lots of hugs and lots of encouragement.

We started school, had our first official mission team come out to the Rez, and added the last little to our brood.  The Galloway family went from seven to eight.

These things have kept us moving and busy.  We have been stretched in ways we never imagined we’d be stretched.  We have fought and battled.  We have prayed.  Goodness, we’ve prayed.  We’ve grown our faith muscles and I’ve realized in a more real way than ever before that He is in the midst of the most intricate details of our lives.

All of those things have been amazing and stretching and exhausting and fulfilling…those are the story though.

Here it is.

At the beginning of June, we were in Farmington, buying new summer clothes for the littles and doing some prep work for our upcoming ministry partners VBS trip.  We were staying over night because…five kids. Six hour round trip.  Too much for this mama. Too much for all those kids. Ha.

That night, at bed, we opened the pull out sofa and the sheets hadn’t been changed.  Actually, it looked more like someone had dumped a boot full of sand in the bed and closed it back up.  Anyway, I went down to the front desk to get fresh sheets and clean blankets.  When I got down there, as it often happens, the receptionist asked me about my accent.  When I told her where we were from, the obvious question was how’d we get out here.  I explained how J came out on a mission trip with Tab Smith Ministries and the struggle of us moving here and how I’d fought.  When I mentioned TSM, tears sprang to her eyes.  She explained that she was born on the Rez.  Her grandfather helped start the churches in a nearby town and she remembered getting Christmas shoe boxes from TSM as a little girl.  It was a really cool God moment and it was a blessing when she looked me in the eye and said, “Thank you for saying yes,”

Fast forward almost three months to the day.  We were back in Farmington, doing our grocery shopping and getting prepped for the mission team coming in that day.  I was checking out at Wal-Mart and the cashier asked me where I was from and how we made our way out West.  I explained our story and how we wound up on the Rez.

She chuckled and began telling me that her dad started several churches in a nearby town.  I asked who he was and she then told me her little sister runs the convenience grocery here in the Valley.  After all this, it clicked.  I asked her if her daughter worked at the hotel in Farmington.  YES!!!! She did.  I asked her if she remembered or knew of our partner ministry, TSM.  She did.  Y’all, I can’t make this up.

The seeds that Tab has been planting for YEARS, they’re coming up.  A beautiful harvest is coming.  Its going to come from the Navajo people.

Each time we are asked our story, Jesus gives us a better one.  We fall more in love with our home with each passing moment. Almost daily, we’re given another confirmation that we are exactly where we’re supposed to be, our family is sinking our roots deep into Navajo soil…

Soaking in God’s goodness, in His word….He’s called us to love.  Period.  Unconditionally.  He’s called us to serve others and to build relationship with other believers.  We’re called to live our lives in such a way that His love oozes out of every pore of our being so that others see Him without having to hear…the hearing comes when people know we care.  They won’t know we care, unless we’re loving them the way Jesus loved the church.

For years, Tab’s been loving the Navajo people…now we have the honor of loving them on the front lines.  My family has the privilege of knowing them in a way that many never will or won’t.  My children have the great joy of being friends with children who don’t look like them, who don’t have all the things they’ve ever had and they are better for it.  As a mama, I have the extraordinary honor of loving someone else’s children and protecting them, feeding them and showing them Christ through my actions and words. The incredible journey, the adventure we’ve been on the past 14 months, is God ordained…I may have doubted early on, not anymore.  The seemingly random meetings, chance conversations…God’s in this, all the way.

My car is full, my house is full, my hands are full and so is my heart.