A Weekend in the Country

The highlight of our week was our weekend get-a-way to Wies, Austria. Wies is the tiny mountain village where our friends Johan and Romana reside. (If you’ll remember … Chris took a few days to visit them back in February.) It lies just outside Graz, Austria which is the hometown to California’s former Governor and Austria’s native son, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although Wies is a short 3 hours from our front doorstep, it feels like a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

Romana, which I lovingly refer to as the Austrian Martha Stewart, cooked us mouth watering meals while Johann served as Deutsch teacher, waiter, Libby entertainer, GPS and all around good guy. Most of our time was spent sitting around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking. How great and praise worthy it is to realize that 2 years ago we could spit out a few German vocabulary words as our only form of communication. This time, conversations were had … granted, grammatically incorrect and American accent full, but conversations none the less.

By the time we left, Libby had invited herself to stay for a week during the summer, Addison and Parker had played 203 games of Chinese checkers which Romana taught us, Chris was still wearing shorts despite the cool temperatures and rain, and I had taken enough pictures to fill many an album … which you can sample below!

Perhaps the best part of the whole experience was what God did with my long time companion – anxiety. As you know and hopefully never tire of hearing about, anxiety has played a part in my life for over 12 years. Waiting on vitamins to come in the mail, I did without a key component to my regiment to combat the symptoms of anxiety. Wednesday, however, the symptoms surfaced with a pretty strong showing. Not panicking as a way to cope, I once again went into full dependence on God mode. Too bad this isn’t a daily thing for me … this total desperation for God to be everything I need. Anyway, Thursday evening before our departure on Friday, God allowed my vitamins to come. Taking usually a good 24 – 36 hours before they “kick in”, Friday was hard. I cried into Chris’ strong shoulders, called a good friend to pray for me … and felt as if I was in a room where someone had turned the lights out. Left to my own devices, I desired staying in bed and drowning out the “yuck” with old episodes of Andy Griffith, retreating from the world. Knowing that wasn’t on the menu as we had been planning this trip for some time, God gave me the “umph” from 12 years of experience and just sheer will to push forward and put one foot in front of the other.

Right before departing for Wies, I cried out to God, literally, and He responded with this verse in Psalm 29:11 “The Lord gives his people strength. The Lord blesses them with peace.” Not feeling like I was “His” much less having any strength or peace, I decided to continue to believe His truth and not my feelings. His words are like bread … are like water … are everything you need.

Here, 2 days later, I SHOUT that my God is bigger and able to conquer anything in the world … or in yourself. Time and time again He has rescued me from that companion – anxiety. Time and time again He has shown me that I truly am my strongest when I feel I am my weakest. It’s His strength that makes my hinny get out of bed and not watch Andy Griffith and act and move and be what He has created me to be … despite what my feelings betray me into thinking.

Here’s to a God that uses what is meant for our demise … to make us STRONG! Wow … wow … wow! I love the power of God … I am HIS … and so are you. What is it you need to make you weak … for you to see His strength? He can be trusted. He can be depended on. Oh that I wouldn’t let a little thing like anxiety to make me totally and utterly dependent on Him but that I would choose to do it everyday!

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