The Lindberg Saga

It all started early last year, January 2002. Mark began telling me about his desire to get back into teaching. I hoped this would pass. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that God had something different for him, so he began praying for that. I didn’t really hear more about it until June of 2003, when Mark told me he had been begging God to steer us. God said it’s hard to steer if the car is in park. That day, Mark came home saying it’s time to put it in gear and let God direct our paths (Proverb 3:5-6). He felt the first step God was leading us to take was to put our house on the market. He also told me that he believed that God had told him that his future was not at DART. We began to get excited, dreaming about the new house God was planning for us. Would it be big? have a pool? have room for a horse? be in the country? be in Texas? What about a new job? would it just fall in our laps as DART had? We were dreaming big!

Next, we met with our realator to take the first step. The first step, it appears, is getting the house ready to be put on the market. That means cleaning it up. “But it’s as clean as it’s going to get!!” I said, “there’s no where to put all of this stuff - hence the need for a bigger house.” His advice was to begin packing, since we’re moving anyway. So, the packing began...

Then, the overwhelming waves began crashing all around. I’m no good at cleaning, at organizing a home, at teaching my children to clean and organize. I’ll be the only one cleaning, organizing, sorting, packing, moving... This will NEVER get done!! We’ll NEVER get it clean. We’ll NEVER put it on the market. We’ll NEVER sell it. We’ll NEVER move. We’ll have to live here FOREVER and DIE in this little house!! Then, God spoke to me so clearly - “I didn’t call you to the future, but only to the present. And all I’ve asked you to do today is clean it up and pack it up.” Oh.... ok. (Obedience is better than sacrifice.)

Of course, around the same time (July 2003), God was calling me to a closer walk with him. It all started with Beth Moore talking about her passionate love for Jesus. I was intrigued with her words. I had known Jesus for 30 years and didn’t talk about him the way she did. I asked our Bible study group if any of them felt the way she did. Only one said yes. Later, she shared with me that her relationship with God changed dramatically when she separated her Bible study from her quiet time. The thought had never really occurred to me. Every Bible study I did was another notch in my belt. Bible study is a real passion of mine. I love getting lost in His Word and finding little jewels and treasures hidden in the text for any who would pursue them. (I’m just realizing that I talked about Bible study the way Beth Moore talked about Jesus.) So, no changes in my ‘quiet time’ - yet.

By early-August, I was fed up with life. What’s the point? I secretly wondered. We get up, do the same things every day, nothing ever changes, and it needs to!! Life of earth is ‘crap’. Sin abounds, even in our churches, even in our own ‘holy’ lives. I had all I wanted of this world. Then Mark and I went to a marriage retreat on August 9 and 10 where I confessed this to him and found that he, too, was struggling with what we both decided was depression. We came to the conclusion that this was because we had reached all of our goals. We had achieved everything we had ever striven for. We were married, built a house, bought 2 cars, a computer, a grand piano, had 2 successful teaching careers (Mark’s dream job), and now an even better job (Mark’s fantasy job), had 2 beautiful daughters, who were turning out perfectly.... So now what? I wondered to Mark. He said, we set new goals - but not the kind that man can say we’ve reached. He wants the goals that only God can say, well done. Enter into my rest you good and faithful servant.

So we began brainstorming. We listed every goal we could think of. Every goal we could ever aspire to. Things like - knowing and being exactly where God wants us to be at all times and being a missionary family (not missionaries, but a family whose goal is to share Jesus with everyone we encounter). At the end of our brainstorming, our list was quite big - too overwhelming for me to keep them all, so we narrowed them down into two pots, just as Jesus boiled down the 10 commandments into 2 main ones. And ironically, ours sound very much like Jesus’. Family goal #1 - Serve God and family goal #2 - Serve others.

Right away, I set out to run for the prize. I was going to serve God. And that meant making Him the very ‘air I breathe’. What does that mean? I wondered. And that was the day I made the commitment to spend time on my knees every morning in a quiet time - separate from my Bible study time. I told God that if He wasn’t going to be the air I breathe, then I don’t want air.