Going with the flow…… How many times have you heard someone say to just “go with the flow?” I’ve heard it quite a lot, so much so that I actually started to believe that that’s what I needed to do. First, let’s rewind for a second. About a month ago during a prayer meeting a woman mentioned how she used to just go with flow, but that she doesn’t do that anymore. Then about a week later I found myself having a conversation with a friend of mine and he made the comment about how he “goes with flow” regarding relationships. I told him what the woman at the prayer meeting had talked about and what I felt as she said it. In my mind, while on the subject, I saw a lazy river. You know, those things at the water parks where you grab you a float, plop down and just ride around the park. Chillin out, maxin, relaxin all cool… It’s an enjoyable, and comfortable, ride to say the least. Now obviously in a lazy river you’re moving, right? There’s no doubt about it that there’s some motion there, but you know what God showed me? You’re not going anywhere. Yeah you’re moving and time is surely going by, but where are you actually going? It’s only taking you in a circle where you’ll keep ending up in the same place. There’s no destination and no ability to get to one if there was. Where does going with flow really get you? A lifetime of wondering where your life went.
The thing is, you see, for months now I have been miserable, and I didn’t know why. Sure I’ve got plenty of stress in my life, but nothing necessarily bad going on, I just haven’t been happy, with work especially. I couldn’t tell you why either, because I have a great job. I absolutely love my job, I love my schedule, but even more so I love the people that I work with. I love my boss, I love my coworkers, and for the most part I love our patients. I love that I live .5 miles from my job because it’s so convenient I can literally walk to work when I want to and come home for lunch every day. I guess you could say I kind of have it made. I’m comfortable…. And THAT, my friends, is the problem. I’ve been telling people for weeks, maybe even months, that I was afraid I was getting so comfortable where I was at, that if God told me to move, I wouldn’t want to do it, or even worse that I WOULDN’T do it, period. I know for a fact now that the reason I’ve been so unhappy lately, the reason why certain things haven’t happened, is because God has been calling me. He’s been calling me out of the river, out of my comfort zone. I’m no longer content with where I’m at and what I’m doing because He’s telling me it’s time to move forward, it’s time to enter a new season.
The world has been telling me to go with the flow, while God is calling me to go against it.
Ok sidetrack away from the seriousness of this blog, its story time. There was actually a time where I quite literally had to go against the flow of a river. This summer some friends and I went “floatin” down the river. (Note those quotation marks, they’re important.) We had this day planned out, the guy that put it all together planned for a 9 mile float that should’ve taken us a little less than 4 hours assuming that the water was still moving roughly 2.5 mph like he had calculated the day before and assumed that it still would be. So we get to our drop off spot, blow up all of our floats and head down to the river ready to ride….. Nothing. That water was as still as the cup of water sitting on my coffee table right now. After a moment of questioning whether or not we should forget it, we dumbly decide to listen to the guy who of course was already sitting in the water on his float saying that since we’re already there we might as well just make the most out of it. So test our luck and pray for the best as we all get in the water and, I hesitate to say, “floated”.. hence the quotation marks. This was more of river SIT. After about an hour and a half in the water we realize that we have only gone .4 miles, and that’s when the panic set in. Our other vehicle was 8.6 miles up ahead and at that rate we would be sleeping on those floats. Should we attempt to ride it out and pray that the water may eventually start moving, but potentially meeting darkness if it doesn’t? Should we try to get out where we are and try to find our way back to the car through the woods, even though we had no idea our way around that area and where the car was parked? As a team we decided that our best solution was to just go up the river back to where we started. After all it was that far and the water was barely moving so it shouldn’t be too hard, right? WRONG. Terribly wrong. Let me just say that fighting the flow of river isn’t easy to begin with, but when you happen to be in the kind of floats we were in, the struggle was about as real as it could get. Oh and did I mention that the water was freezing?!?! Yeah. So after about an hour, maybe even two, of us looking like a bunch of fools trying to paddle with our hands( since of course we didn’t bring actual paddles) and push these stupid, ginormous floats up this river that was barely even moving, we finally made it back and survived to tell the story. Let that just put into prospective how powerful a flow really is. Going against it was probably the most difficult thing for us to do out of our choices when it comes to the effort we had to put in, but at the end of the day it provided the best result. I personally wasn’t too fond of the idea of hiking and possibly getting lost in the woods with no clothes and no shoes on, nor did I care to be floating for 12 hours down a creepy river with the moon as our only source of light. Even as adventurous as I am, I’d have to say no thanks!!!!!
So moving on from real rivers let’s get back to this lazy river thing…. I already stated that simply going with the flow doesn’t get you anywhere. I mean, how can you go where God is telling you to go if you’re being led by something that isn’t Him? Metaphorically speaking here. As long as you’re in that river you’re not going to get anywhere except where it takes you, so what if God is calling you to the woods? What if He is calling you to go the opposite direction? How are you going to get there sitting still while only the water is what’s moving? Here’s Hannah’s answer… Get off your butt and get on your feet! That’s my life motto right now. The only way to get where you need to get is to move ON PURPOSE. You’ve got to decide that you’re willing to go, even if you don’t have a map, even if you don’t know the exact destination, all you’ve got to know is that you’re ready to move your feet and simply… go. I don’t know about ya’ll, but I don’t want the years to keep slipping by me. I may be young, but I don’t feel like it, and I’m definitely not getting any younger. Every year that goes by I look back and think, man, what did I do with that year?! What have I done with my LIFE?!?! I’m tired of feeling that way! More so, I’m tired of saying and not DOING. I’m tired of being stuck. I’m tired of putting my faith in finances and letting a half empty bank account speak on my behalf and say I can’t do something. I’m tired of my faith walk being a cake walk. Recently I felt like God asked me, “How can I ever prove to you what I’m capable of, if you never give me the chance to?”
Wow. What a thought. We sit here and love to say that “God is able..” but how much do we believe it? Really? How often do we ever do anything that takes so much faith that God is literally the only way. How many times do we say that “With God all things are possible”, but we look at something in black and white and immediately think it’s not possible. We simply talk a big game, but when we step up to plate, we don’t even swing. I encourage you to start living life against the flow, to make life happen FOR you instead of waiting for it to happen TO you. That’s been me for too long. I’ve been under the impression that if I just sit and wait patiently, one day God is going to knock on my door and hand me my destiny in a huge box, gift wrapped with a pretty bow on it. However, Matthew 7 verse 7 clearly tells us that if WE knock, the door will be opened. A season of waiting doesn’t mean you have to be idle while you wait. So while part of this blog was to encourage ya’ll to do this, the main point of this was to make known that I’ve been on a lazy river, but this is me getting out.
I mentioned how I’ve been so discontent with my life lately, to the point where I nearly broke down crying out of nowhere just sitting at my desk a few weeks ago while looking out the window with my mind just thinking about how much else was out there and how I wanted to be doing more. I should have known then that it was God trying to speak to me. I truly believe that if your heart is hungry for God and desperate for His will in your life, He will lead you where He wants you to go simply by allowing you to no longer be comfortable where He’s telling you to leave, even to the point that it would be unbearable for you to be there. I feel like that’s almost to the point I got. So any ways, I’ve already been feeling this way for weeks, this feeling, longing really, in the pit of my stomach for MORE, when I happen to scroll through facebook while everyone at work was on lunch and I had down time. Someone had shared a page asking for donations for this girl to go on the world race. I immediately thought, “What in the WORLD is the world race?” so out of curiosity I clicked on it… Now if you’re like I was and have no idea what the world race is, it’s pretty much a mission trip. I’ll get to the details later. So as soon I get to this site and I see what it is I felt like my heart was about to rip itself out of my chest. I almost broke down crying, again, thinking “God I want to do something like this!” (FYI I have always wanted to go on a mission trip)… As I kept reading and getting more of an idea of what it was, the more I saw the faster my heart was beating and the bigger the lump in my throat got. It didn’t take me too long, in fact I just had to read a particular sentence that said something along the lines of “you’re reading this right now and your heart is beating out of your chest because you know that God is calling you to more”… and that was it. I had 40 something dollars in my bank account, 4 days away from payday, but right then and there I filled out the application and paid the $35 application fee asking God, what do I have to lose? I had to go through the whole interviewing process knowing in the back of my mind how much of a miracle it was going to take for me to be able to make it considering the large sum of money it required, in addition to the life changes. I fought doubt and fear, but even more than that, my faith, my hunger and my passion were growing. I began fighting those negative thoughts, telling God that if it was HIS will, HE would make a way, HE would open the right doors, and that no matter what I was going to trust HIM and I wasn’t going to be disappointed if I didn’t get accepted.
Well, I got accepted. I am proud to announce that I officially have been offered the opportunity to begin a once in a lifetime adventure in January, to travel for 11 months to 11 different countries on The World Race…and I’ve never been so excited and so unbelievably terrified in my entire life, which according to pinterest is a good thing. I mean I’ve only been as far as South Carolina, so leaving the country is going to be a big deal for me in itself, but that’s not the scary part for me. The scary part is knowing what it’s going to take for me to get there. It’s going to require me getting out of my comfort zone to an entirely different extent and doing something I’ve never been good at, something that I absolutely HATE doing…and that’s admitting that I need help, and asking for it. Right now is where my faith is being stretched the farthest it’s ever been, and that excites me because that means that God is able to prove Himself faithful and get all the glory!!!! However, I know this isn’t going to happen with just me and God, as much as I wish it would. He’s got to use people, and I’ve got to let Him. So I’m not going to go into all of the details of what I need to make this happen, I will be keeping you all posted on that. This is just me letting you all know that I am going to need you. All of you. Maybe you can’t contribute anything other than prayers, but that’s what I’m asking for. I’m asking for your prayers and for your support, not just financially. I don’t need any questions as to “how?” or “what about this?” and “what about that?” I’m not asking for your doubts or your negativity. I’m asking for you to believe in me, but more importantly to believe in God, to truly believe that He is ABLE. Not just in my life, but I’m asking you to believe that in yours as well. I’m asking you to get out and go. I’m asking you to, simply, go against the flow…..
