Jenny and I thought we knew what the summer looked like.

As I mentioned in the last newsletter, our son Elliott had been accepted to the United States Coast Guard Academy. We had a date circled — end of June, New London, Connecticut. Our daughter Annabelle graduates this Friday and we assumed graduate school was next. Jenny and I were quietly preparing ourselves for the empty nest we'd been anticipating.

Then the road went a different way.

Annabelle was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and will spend the coming year in Malta. That one was pure joy — unexpected and wonderful. But Elliott received a devastating letter that said he was disqualified from the Academy for medical reasons. A door we believed God had opened suddenly closed in a way that felt, honestly, like injustice.

It's a lot to hold.

In the middle of it, Elliott said something that has stayed with me. He said he felt lost — and that maybe he needed to be lost for a while. I've been turning that over ever since.

The Israelites could have reached the promised land far more directly. The geography didn't require forty years. But I don't think the wandering was a detour. I think it was the point. God wasn't just moving them from one place to another. He was forming them. Building something in their character that the promised land itself would require.

And here's a question I'm sitting with — what if we've been wrong about what the promised land even looks like? What if the road that seemed so clear was never going the direction we thought? Maybe sometimes the redirect is the gift.

James puts it plainly: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance." Not joy because the trial is good. Joy because of what grows in you through it.

Marcus Aurelius said something that echoes this: "What stands in the way becomes the way." The obstacle isn't blocking the path. It is the path. In our case, the obstacle opened a door we didn't know was there.

When hard things happen, something else happens too. The people who love you show up. In Elliott's situation, we have been overwhelmed — friends, acquaintances, even people we don't always see eye to eye with, reaching out, offering help, making calls, asking questions. Walls come down. Something that feels like loss becomes an unexpected gift of community.

I think God designs it that way.

It reminds me of why I have always loved Emmaus. Up on that mountain, it doesn't matter what you do for a living or where you come from or what divides us down here. We are together in one common purpose — loving Jesus and letting Him love us. I imagine heaven looks a lot like that.

We don't know what the future holds. We rarely do, even when we think we do. But there's a promise in Philippians that anchors me: "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion." — Philippians 1:6

God is not finished. Not with Elliott. Not with Annabelle. Not with you. Not with this community.

And in the meantime — when all we want to do is crawl up in His lap and hold on — that's exactly where He wants us.

De Colores,

Jason Hill