“You’re leaving soon for a year to serve God. All this stuff is just a distraction from what need to be preparing for.
A friend said this to me today and it shocked me how a statement so simple could be so profound. But before I get into all that let me back up and tell you a little back-story.
The last few weeks…well month really have been extremely challenging for me. It seem like I was getting attacked from all sides. Minor conflicts felt like huge arguments. Everything was personal. I had shed tears over everything. A war was raging inside me. Every truth I knew about myself no longer mattered. Every fear and insecurity I have ever felt was hanging over my head. Everything was escalated.
Slowing that crushing and suffocating feeling of being surrounded on all sides and being too tired to fight anymore sank in and during a moment of worship I began to see that I was feeding into fear and was beginning to believe the ever-growing lies the devil has been feeding me.
Fast forward to the present moment.
I have never been afraid to say goodbye. Change hasn’t ever really bothered me much. I prided myself on being a gypsy with a terminal case of wanderlust, having always been ready for the next adventure, the next place.
But as I think about this next year of my life preparing for what lies ahead, I am suddenly crippled with fear.
Fears that when I get back everyone I know will have moved on without me…forgetting me. Fears that friendships will be forever changed. Fears that the longer I stay away from my dad the easier it is to accept a life without him. Fears of being left behind. Fears of what come next after the adventure. Fear of living life in very close quarters with people who don’t know me.
So I find myself clinging, grasping for control and not finding any. Spinning faster and faster into the chaotic storm rising up inside my heart. I find myself slowly shutting down. Shutting people out. Putting up walls I had once torn down.
With all of the uncertainty that the next year of my life holds I have discovered that I am not as fearless I would like people to think, as I once believed.
So here I sit, writing this blog with tears streaming down my face I realize that somehow in the last year and half of being home, stuck in one place, not wandering, that this place I once was so excited to leave had become home. I had fallen in love with this city and it’s people. For the first time in my life I will be sad to leave. There are people who have become apart of my life that I will miss dearly and that scares me.
So here I am driving with a friend who says something so simple yet so profound. Something along the lines of “You’re leaving soon for a year to serve God. All this stuff is just a distraction from what need to be preparing for.”
I turned this statement over and over in my head for literally hours. Then I heard it, in the distant corner of my heart…the scary yet bold prayer I prayed to lyrics of Hillsong United’s “Oceans”
“Spirit lead me where my trust is without boarders, let me walk along the waters wherever you would call me. Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander and my faith would be made stronger in the presence of my savior.”
This was a bold prayer. This was a dangerous prayer. This is the prayer of someone who deeply desires the presence of The Lord. Someone who deeply desires to know the heart of The Father and I do. This requires me to spend time with Him…which lately I haven’t been doing. This requires me to expose every piece of my heart to Him willingly and not hide pieces of my heart from Him. I realize in the past month I have been doing a lot of hiding.
I have no control over what happens in the lives of the people I am leaving behind. I realize that the fear of being forgotten in completely irrational. I realize that my faint heart can’t do anything without Jesus.
In this realization I hear the promises of a God who loves me dearly.
The promise to always give me what I need to take each step and to always light the way through the darkness. The promise to always be a safe place where my heart and soul can find rest in the ups and in the downs. The promise that there will always be trials and persecutions but he has always overcome. The promise that I am never forgotten.
