At the end of training camp, I had the closest thing I’ve ever had to a vision of Jesus standing in the surf, embracing me in the glow of the setting sun. For a Very Normal Methodist Who Does Not Get Visions, I have gotten a lot of them on the Race.
On the last night of launch, I stood in worship thinking about the journey ahead. In less than 24 hours, I would be on a plane to Istanbul. I was overwhelmed, exhausted, ready to get on a plane back to Fort Worth. But for just a moment, as I swayed with my eyes closed, the vision I had at training camp overwhelmed me again- strangely different this time.
Jesus was holding me and I was clinging to him in the last golden light of a beautiful sunset. The surf was swirling around our feet and the sky was braids of purple and pink and blue, and my head was on his shoulder and my arms around his neck in the closest embrace. But this time it wasn’t a stranglehold, a long-awaited reunion. This time, we were dancing.
That is the most cliche, Jesus-is-my-boyfriend sentence I have ever written. And journaling about the moment later, I literally cringed at how silly it sounded.
On top of that, I’ve never been a very good dancer. My body always feels too large and awkward and in the way. But I do love to two-step. I’m not very good, and always looking down at my feet to keep the beat, but I love it. So my dance with Jesus was a two-step, which is not, like, the holiest of dances.
So while the dance was beautiful, it was confusing. I didn’t understand the point of it, and questioned whether it was really Jesus or just my own imagination. By the time we went to Bucharest for debrief, I had almost forgotten about the moment.
One night during debrief, we had a session on vulnerability. My squad mentor, Chrissy, asked us to close our eyes and picture ourselves in our happy place.
I’ve never been good at those “happy place” exercises, because I’ve never been good at picking where I’m happiest. But this time, unbidden, I saw myself in the fields north of my hometown, in a wide, flat expanse of green grass, with the endless blue sky curving over me and the sun setting radiantly in burnished gold and pink and every imaginable shade of orange.
“Now picture all of the stuff you don’t want anyone to ever know about, out around you.” Chrissy said.
I saw everything: the insecurities and anxiety, the sins I never wanted the world to know, the remnants of the people I’d poured my heart into, with so much love and rejection wrapped around them like dirty rags. My hands were too small to hold them all.
“Now Jesus comes in. What do you do? What does he do?”
My eyes got wide and I froze, trying to figure out how to explain to Jesus what’s around me, what I’m holding in my hands. But he doesn’t care. He smiles at me, and laughs a little as he untwists the rags from my palms.
And he doesn’t let go. Instead, he pulls me in and dances with me, and I lean in close and let Jesus lead. We are joy, there under the Texas sunset I miss so much. We are freedom.
Freedom.
What I realized in that moment was this: the visions of dancing with Jesus have been an invitation into freedom, a call for me to let go of all the things I hold so closely to my chest I can’t stretch my arms out to my Savior.
It is an odd, cliche, Jesus-is-my-boyfriend type of story. It is the type of story I scorn as being too emotional, too silly to be real. But it happened to me, and I don’t want to spend this Race with my arms at my sides because I’m suspicious of my own emotions.
I want to learn to dance with Jesus, to two-step right into the kind of joy and security I’ve only tasted. I want the passions of my heart to coincide with the freedom of my soul, so when I write about justice and mercy and grace I can lift my eyes up to the Lord and know that he looks on me with the same love I so deeply believe he pours out to others.
Someday I’ll look at a Texas sunset again and remember these moments. I’ll look up into love.
