Another Test of Faith and Anxiety

So the next big test on our faith for God's provision and protection came in 2006-07 as we were feeling very burned out and wondering what God was up to. We had had a sabbatical time where we felt rested physically but not very inspired for our work spiritually. We found out that our church had been through some serious setbacks while we were gone and it continued to go on this trajectory after we returned. Financially the church was in trouble, some members were going through personal crises and certain interpersonal relationships were crumbling. We were clear that we needed to give everything we had to bring the church back to stability which included making some hard choices in all the above-mentioned categories. After we had done this and suffered a sense of defeat and discouragement, we sought God for the future. Nothing really happened, no inspiration, no sense of continuing grace for the job came forward.
One day I casually picked up a little magazine called Senfkorn that I had never bothered reading before and saw an article on spiritual discernment using Ignatian exercises. Steve and I looked at our situation through the eyes of these discernment questions, like "What is good, but what is better?" We believed it would be good for us to stay at Soli Deo, but it would be better for someone to come who had fresh energy and vision for the church, because we didn't. After answering several such questions, the answer to our big question was actually pretty clear. We should leave, head back to America and hand over Soli Deo to the next leader(s).
In hindsight, making the decision was almost easier than living with the decision and implementing it. We broke the news to people and sent shockwaves throughout the church, the conference, our family and our friends. We had to once again seek God's provision in ways we had never done before. What would this mean for the fledgling church? Would it survive yet another loss? What would this mean for our friends who had just recently come to faith through us? What would this mean for our children to leave the only home they'd ever known?
Our bodies began to reflect the stress and anxiety of the situation. Sleep became elusive. On a humorous note, one night both Steve and I were awake at about 3 a.m. We started talking about the situation and it was like we were constantly on problem-solving mode at that time, so we talked about how we were going to deal with certain things. At one point, Steve suddenly rolled over and said, "well good-night again. I'm going to sleep now." We both cracked up because we both knew that sleep was no longer a decision one makes to do, but more like a luxury that sometimes you receive and sometimes you don't.