It was about ten years ago when we met Josh and Katie Melhorn for the first time. The Melhorns have become some of our closest friends; beginning with praying for our wives together as they were pregnant and sick, encouraging and praying with each other as our church, families, and jobs have gone through transition, and just being faithful friends in all circumstances. I even like going to their daughters' birthday parties! But at first I was skeptical...
Our first dinner with the Melhorns, ten years ago, started weirdly for me, and I can still remember it like it was yesterday. The salad was so fancy--raspberries, walnuts, white stuff, vinaigrette, spinach--I had never had anything like it before. Salad for my family growing up was basic fruit salad or fruit cocktail, and green salads were lettuce, maybe carrots, and thousand island dressing. This was different, new, interesting, but I wasn't sure if it would actually be good.
I decided that the polite thing to do would be to not make a joke about it, but to eat it, which I did, and was surprised that it all actually did taste pretty good. I learned Katie's meals were always good, but I also learned something else. New things can be really good, especially when prepared by someone who knows what they are doing.
I believe God has prepared something new for our family and He knows what He is doing. We are merely obeying and beginning to taste what He has in store for us. I feel like I am just beginning to pick up my fork and I haven't quite tasted everything that is in His plan for us. Like tasting raspberries outside of the salad context, I've been to Tucson but I've never tasted Tucson in the church planting context. What will it really be like? Will it be good? What about all the other elements in the salad--new friends, new experiences, new people? I don't even know what the white stuff is yet, and I surely don't know what everything is yet in what God has put in front of us.
I want to start by savoring this experience that God has prepared for my family. I know it will be good. Like eating the salad, I'm going to start slow, maybe a little apprehensive, but boldly I will go forward and eat and plant. And it will be good.
