Okay, I was originally planning on continuing my series on South Carolina today, but my heart is in Poland right now, so I’m sharing this picture… from Germany. LOL I’ll explain how I got there in a minute.

It is interesting how life twists and turns. If you had asked me this time last year what I’d be doing right now, I’d have told you I would be in Poland, leading a kids camp. For those of you that know us, or at least that have been following along on the blog, you know that for the last three years Holly and I have been going to Poland to take part in a kids camp there that the church we attend partners in. When we finished the camp last year I was certain we would be going again this year as leaders because the previous leader wasn’t able to return in 2015. As 2014 continued, however, I began to feel restless. The previous years the decision to go had come easy, but now, suddenly, neither Holly nor I could honestly say we were feeling the push to go. We sought counsel and ultimately decided to bow out, fearing that if we did go, it would be for the wrong reasons. Fast forward to today, everything is much clearer.

Around the same time as we were struggling with the decision to go or not to go, I was also putting a lot of thought into my job. I had been with Claris Networks for almost 10 years, and while I loved my job and the people I worked with, I sensed the winds of change blowing. It was almost as if I felt that everything that had been solid for the last several years was now unhinged, and floating… waiting to be pieced back together into something, perhaps different. Holly was feeling similarly. In December everything starting taking shape; Holly left her job to begin pursuing meaningful volunteer work, something we’d been working towards for a while. In April, I left my job at Claris to join another company named 451 Research. Both of these moves will ultimately allow Holly and I to travel more and invest more deeply in the things that matter most to us… but we needed a moment to put it all together. We needed a moment to listen closely to where God was leading us.

So here we are in July again, and tomorrow starts the kids camp in Poland. As I’ve been watching our American friends post pictures of themselves with all our Polish friends, and listen to the anticipation of all the week to come will bring, it caused me to reminisce, and thumb through my old pictures of Poland from years past. That is when I stumbled upon this image, one that I had previously overlooked. The symbolism of the windmill standing tall in the golden field after a passing storm seemed too true to ignore. Just as the windmill does no work on its own, but rather by the power of the wind blowing through its “arms”, so too are we called as Christians to stand tall, arms out, ready to go wherever the Holy Spirit takes us.

–Dan Thompson