It wasn’t the comfy-room I was familiar with. It wasn’t my family room. It was new and intimidating, and I wasn’t good at new…I was really – REALLY – good at comfy and familiar, but not at new. I cried and spent the entire evening and night in my room.
To this day, I don’t know if my parents are aware of how much that one change stressed me out, but it’s one I remember quite well.
A few years later we moved and I was onto my 6th public school in 10 grades of schooling, knowing it would only be the second of three high schools. I didn’t handle that change well at all, either.
Looking back on those memories – my screaming fits, my tears, my anxiety levels through the roof – I see that the Lord has brought me MILES from where I began, but last year in the months leading up to the race, those familiar anxieties were my constant companions amongst my prep time.
A year ago I was looking straight ahead to making the largest life-change I had ever made – jumping into the most radical thing I could comprehend taking on. At 6 weeks away from launch, I was freaking the f out, to say the least. I was excited and terrified and up and down and all over the place.
Today, as my friend Steph and I followed along our regular routine of checking in about everyday stuff and daydreaming about our future apartment life, simultaneously, while occasionally also discussing logistical things (like we’re real grown-ups), she asked me how I was feeling about this whole thing (“this whole thing” meaning the race ending, going to see our families for about 6 weeks, and then jumping into the unknown of the next phase of growing up)…and I almost had no words to describe how good I actually feel about it, so I chose these:
“I feel perfect. I just feel perfect."
Tomorrow is my last day of ministry on The World Race.
After that we have Saturday to pack, Sunday to travel to debrief, a few days to spend with the squad celebrating the incredible God we’ve come to know so much more intimately this year, and then we will (most of us) board a plane through Tokyo to LA – where we’ll hug, smile, maybe cry, exchange ‘I love you’s, and go our separate ways for the first time since September 6th, 2011.
Once again, everything I know – everything I’m accustomed to, everything I understand as daily life – is going to change permanently.
And I feel perfect. I j
At this point, on the flip-side of this journey, I’m looking at making the same transition in reverse plus starting something else that will completely flip my life upside-down…or right-side up…or just propel me into the incredible goodness of the new season the Lord is bringing me in to. Choose your own wording, I prefer the last.
I will land in DC on July 28th, head to the beach with my family on August 18th, and move to Gainesville, Georgia with one of the most phenomenal women I know sometime mid-September.
But I don’t know how long this change lasts.
I’m not going on an 11-month long trip, I’m changing my life – my home life – and it’s open-ended.
And I feel perfect. I just feel perfect.
I've always kind of just interpreted what Paul writes in Philippians 4:6&7 to mean something like "know when you're anxious that it's wrong and pray for peace to combat it."
That's not what it says, though. Paul says "do not be anxious about anything," like we have a choice…and it's in the Bible, so I'm guessing we do?
No guessing, we do. We have a choice. I CHOOSE not to be anxious about ANYTHING.
ohhhh, that feels good. what's next?
"in everything by prayer and supplication with THANKSGIVING let your requests be made known to God…"
"supplication" seems like a stupid big church-word to me, so I'll let you in on a little secret: it just means humble yourself – which is another big-ish word with tons of meanings – so I'll let you in on ANOTHER little secret: humility in it's simplest form is realizing you are not the center of the universe and your needs do not supersede the needs of any other person, and they certainly don't surpass the plans God has for you, so it's just realizing He knows better than you do…
so know and believe that God knows best and thank Him for what we have. That's it,
"And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus."
We're always in transition – but the only constant isn't change, it's Jesus – which means the only other constant we can rely on is His peace. I learned today that staring in the face of transition, as the former poster-child for pre, mid, and post-change anxiety, the only way I can describe actually sitting in a position of feeling the peace that surpasses understanding is this:
I feel perfect. I just feel perfect.
Even looking at making the biggest change I’ve ever made, knowing I’m facing some opposition and knowing I don’t have it all figured out:
I feel perfect. I just feel perfect.
