Heads Carolina, Tails Arizona

God is with you wherever you move

by Joy K. Ball

I was sitting in traffic mentally rehearsing my very long “to-do” list and feeling completely overwhelmed. We were preparing for our second cross-country move in six years—this time from Arizona “back home” to North Carolina. I squinted as the sun blazed its path across the desert sky. My teenage daughters shuffled songs from their playlists on the radio—music that was mostly from my generation, but “cool again” because their generation had discovered it. “Heads Carolina, tails California, somewhere greener, somewhere warmer….” I chuckled to myself. Well, somewhere warmer was right anyway! The thermometer in my car said 110 degrees.

My mind drifted back over the past 6 years.

My family had moved from North Carolina to Arizona for a job promotion for my husband and perhaps a sense of Southwest adventure. The thing I remember most about that time was the overwhelming sense that God was propelling us forward at every critical juncture and clearly pointing us to go, by coordinating circumstances. In fact, the only reason we could find not to move in the end was fear. But we didn’t want to live in fear, and we didn’t want to teach our children to fear, so we prayed and we planned and we hoped and we went.

I attacked the move the same way I had every other challenge in my life— head-on and with lots of determination. I joined a church and two Bible studies, enrolled the girls in Christian school, volunteered to be a homeroom mom, unpacked boxes, and did everything humanly possible to carve out a new life in a desert that looked as dry and barren as my heart felt.

Then the bottom fell out. I was an unemployed pediatrician undergoing an identity crisis as a stay-at-home mom, and I felt like I was floundering at that! I was throwing everything I had into my family and our new life, but it still didn’t seem to be enough. My energy was gone, and I was weary of striving. I felt distracted, exposed, inadequate and angry. Angry mostly at myself because I have known the truth of the gospel since I was a child but somehow, I had allowed my self-worth to become completely entangled with what I did and had bought in to an illusion of control. Stripped of these things, I was unraveling.

“But God, who is rich in mercy” didn’t leave me there. When I came to the end of myself and laid it down at His feet, He provided streams in the desert.

He gave us a church and friends who taught us the meaning of the “family of believers” and would support us through some scary health crises yet to come. He gave the girls a beautiful school with teachers and friends who loved them and invested in them and pointed them to Christ. He led me to the Just Moved Ministry After the Boxes Are Unpacked study where I was privileged to have Susan Miller teach me how to not only unpack my boxes, but the baggage I held in my heart.

I learned to cherish memories, but not cling to the past. I learned to “bloom where I was planted,” accepting my circumstances and looking for ways to find joy serving God in the midst of them.
I prayed for a thankful heart that would see all the multitude of blessings Christ had given me. I stopped “striving” and started “abiding” in Christ, opening my heart to new callings and new relationships. And not because of the strength of my resolve or anything good in me, but by sheer grace, God blessed, and we began to love our new home.

As I sat in traffic that day, in the sunshine I had come to love and the heat I had learned to tolerate, I pondered the irony that when I finally felt settled in Arizona, we were now moving back to North Carolina.

As I write this, we are coming up on our one-year anniversary of the move.

There was definitely a sense of “homecoming” this time around, but in reality, we never really “go back” to a place. Time marches on, and people and places change and grow.

There are many days now that we’re in North Carolina when I fondly remember Arizona. I have to remind myself not to slide into complaining, especially on gray and rainy winter days. Recently I looked at my husband and said, “You know…we ate leeks in Scottsdale…in the SUNSHINE!” Unfortunately, the Exodus reference to a complaining people of God fit me perfectly that day. (Numbers 11:5)

When I think about the song on the radio that day, I am so thankful that the circumstances of our lives don’t really depend on the flip of coin, as romantic as that sounds. At the end of the day, we are where we are because a Sovereign God has placed us there. To quote Charles Spurgeon, “God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.”

God is at work in our lives even when we don’t feel it and our faith is small. When we think we have surely made such a mess of things that no one can fix it, He has promised to redeem it all for our good and His glory. When our energy fails and we come to the end of our resources, we realize it is God who has been sustaining us all along. He is faithful, and He alone can satisfy our deepest longing. We can trust Him with the outcomes. When we abide in these truths, we can live with confidence in our “messy” lives.

I will forever be grateful that God led our family to the desert and enriched our lives with His truth and His beautiful people there.

Heads Carolina, tails Arizona, California, or the farthest reaches of the earth—as long as Christ goes with us we can trust that the journey won’t be in vain

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Joy K. Ball, is a beloved pediatrician and dedicated wife and mother of two. Joy is passionate about the health and well-being of children and loves to travel and make memories with her family by exploring new destinations. When not working, she loves baking, reading, writing, hiking, volunteering at her church, and cheering at her kids’ sporting events. Joy brings her love of adventure and learning to life in her debut children’s book, Winnie Goes to School. Her second book, Winnie’s Christmas Treasure Hunt, is coming just in time for Christmas 2023! Subscribe at joykball.com for FREE resources.