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Summer flexing on the summit of Mt. Powell in Colorado!

Summer is one of the most amazing women I’ve ever met. Her heart’s longing is for Jesus above anyone and all else. She loves others with a love I’ve never seen before. She wants to hike in the Himalaya, explore the mountains of South America, and gaze at the beauty of Alaska. She longs to share the love of Jesus in remote, impoverished places that many people have never heard of before. For almost seven months on the World Race, she saw all of my hurts, my sin, and my joy and yet still saw through all of my ugliness to the person who Jesus is revealing me to be. She daily dealt with the excruciating pain of falling in love with me without knowing how I felt in return for almost all of the World Race. And yet still chose to love me and the rest of our team relentlessly through it all. She chooses to trust my decisions to obey God, even when they seem crazy. And she is full of amazing grace in our relationship.

 
The past few days have once again felt like the hardest death of our friendship I’ve ever experienced. Like someone’s life flashing before their eyes when facing death, scenes of some of the tough yet amazing times have been flashing through my mind being faced with what seems like another potential death of our relationship. Memories over the past month and a half of climbing in Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming, memories of driving through snowstorms to see friends, memories of making and sharing dinner together, or just walking miles through the falling snow trying to find a coffee shop to get some work done here in Denver…all break my heart. Memories of running through the gray and bleak of Ukraine or hiking in the Himalaya of India. Memories of sharing Jesus in Croatia or swimming miles through the Adriatic Sea. Memories of running through the hills and forests of Romania while sharing the love of Jesus with people along the way.

For now, God has asked Summer to be away from me. She’s left to seek God, and I don’t know where she is nor when I’ll see or talk to her again. Yet I trust that God will continue to care for her better than I can. I don’t know what He will ask of her, or what He will ask of me. I am at times in what feels like unbelievable pain knowing that she is sharing an amazing time somewhere in the beauty of God’s creation with God Himself, and I can’t be there to share that.  Yet I’m trying  to take that pain to my God as I know that she is being transformed in a way that I can’t be a part of.  I leave for Spain in less that eight weeks and I don’t know whether she will be there…or if we’ll even be able to hang out. A week ago I was excited to book my flight to Spain, and yet the other night I just felt lonely watching a Lufthansa flight taxi towards a takeoff to Frankfurt at the airport in Denver.

Yet this is God’s perfect timing to once again draw me into Him. He foresaw everything! The two of us in Colorado at the same time, both of us excited to possibly be in Spain at the same time while pursuing opportunities that God has placed on our hearts. Even if this season between us is over, God has used this friendship to transform both of us in a way we never could have planned.

Aaron Stanski, one of my amazing friends from college flew in from Chicago this past weekend, and we enjoyed attempting a winter ascent of one of Colorado’s tougher 14,000 foot peaks. We eventually turned back 1000 feet from the top to avoid a potentially hazardous avalanche-prone route and yet loved being in the harsh beauty of a winter wonderland forming around us. More amazing to me than the peak, though, was how God worked once again in my heart our first night as I walked out alone to stare at the stars and simply enjoy His presence. I took my loneliness to God in a way I never could before. He drew me into Him, erasing the knawing loneliness of my heart with Him in a way I’ve never experienced before. And for the rest of the night, I was in awe; all of my fear and pain had been taken away.

The past four days, I’ve been able to sing. I’ve loved spending time in the presence of God through music for hours like I’ve never experienced before. My loneliness is forcing me into a depth with God that I continue to ache for, and yet rarely would choose … or maybe never could choose without the pain that often comes with transformation. My loneliness right now sometimes looks like a cold dark chasm, like a deep crevasse hundreds of feet deep into menacing, dark ice. And yet God’s giving me the opportunity to see a depth of intimacy with Him that perhaps I’ve never seen before by taking this loneliness to Him rather than trying to fill it with anyone else. Perhaps God exposes more and more of the pain left by the void without Him so we are increasingly drawn to see the true love only offered by Him.  This pain hurts, yet I know that it needs to happen.  God is doing something right now in each of our lives that I don’t fully understand yet, but that I know is essential.
 
And between Summer and I — our relationship only works if it dies to God.  What both of us long for can’t happen in our own strength.  We desire to serve God first; and if we are to be together, God must draw us there.  And if not, our awesome God has something more amazing planned than the two of us can see.  Ultimately Jesus is Summer’s husband.  And if I get to have the opportunity to share caring for her heart here on earth with Jesus, I get to continually…and ultimately give her over to Jesus for an eternity when my time on this earth is over.
 

“You won’t relent
Until You have it all
My heart is Yours

Come be the fire inside of me
Come be the flame upon my heart
Come be the fire inside of me
Until You and I are one“

— Misty Edwards to Jesus
 Colorado Aspen this Autumn
 

Center:  Summer flying down the Tetons on showshoes!