Here We Go!

Next week is our last week of a full-time job on the side of Hand Lettering Co.! It's been a great blessing to hear many of your encouragements and even more so to see how God has already brought jobs out of nowhere (from our point of view, but we know it's all from Him!) that help make the transition a bit smoother. He is so kind to do so! 

We've been reflecting lately on some of the funny, yet completely wise, ways that God works. For one, the past several months we have been trying in our own strength to make Hand Lettering Co. a full-time thing and yet it just wasn't happening at all. The best word to describe it is that we were striving. Finally, after many months of this and becoming completely exhausted, we realized what was going on and decided to pull back from Hand Lettering Co. a bit. We shut down the custom order form and decided to simply keep up with orders and not worry about building up the business. Almost to the very week of that decision, things started changing and we realized that the transition was going to come whether we wanted it to or not! And soon after, freelance work started coming in as well and it was so clear that it was God's doing and not our own (which is exactly how He wants it to be)! 

Similarly, we took a couple of weeks off around Christmas to rest and celebrate together as a family but also to have time to pray and talk and gear up for the transitions ahead. That very week we got sick, one after another, for almost a month straight. 

Once again, the Lord is so graciously and patiently teaching us to trust in Himself with all of our hearts and lean not on our own understanding. In all our ways, He's teaching us to acknowledge Him and He Himself is making our paths straight (Proverbs 3:5-6). He is also teaching us that we can boast in our weakness, because it's in our weakness that He is strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). All this so He may receive the glory and not us and that we may boast in Him and not in ourselves.