It’s 5:30 in the morning.
I’ve been up for an hour because I can’t sleep.
I’ve woken up every night for over a week now once an hour, on average, and it usually takes me about ten to fifteen minutes to go back to sleep each time.
And tonight, I feel like I’m at my breaking point.
I’ve never had to live in fear like this. Every night of my life I’ve been able to sleep soundly in a comfortable bed in a house in a safe place where the worst that has ever happened has been an unarmed break-in. Here, three teams in Mozambique already falling prey to robberies in the last two weeks and us with our own scare when we caught someone looking through our windows late at night, I dread sundown every day. I dread the moment everyone else falls asleep and I’m left restless in my tent to wait for the tribal drums to start playing in the distance and the mice to creep along the top of the wall, raining tiny bits of concrete down onto my tent.
Darkness has always been one of my biggest fears, but this month it’s gone to a new level.
Noises wake me up scared, barely daring to breathe, listening for what could’ve been footsteps outside the window. I hear things creak and crack and fall onto our tin roof – the roof that doesn’t even cover our miniature hallway such that someone could drop straight into our house if they wanted – and wonder when a man will walk into my room with a machete.
I sleep with a metal pot lid and a knife next to my head.
I’ve prayed about it, asking God why I get so scared when I know he will provide what I need, that he’ll never leave. I’ve prayed when I’ve woken up, spent time with God in my sleeping bag. I’ve repeated the name of Jesus thousands of times, usually because I just don’t know what else to do.
But I am just so scared. The fear only goes away at sunrise. I don’t feel more at peace knowing God is with me. The drums in the distance just seem to grow louder.
And I feel really guilty about it.
I feel like I’m supposed to be stronger than this, like nothing should faze me and as though I should be able to handle anything because of the fear and power of God in me. Didn’t I come on the Race for things like this? Why is this so difficult for me? If someone did break in, I would just run to the door and liberally flail the metal pot lid into their face like I’ve been ready to do so many nights – what’s the big deal?
I think I don’t feel more at peace after I pray because I still value my life over God’s kingdom, and my life is something that he might ask of me one day. I even felt like God asked if I would die for him during debrief, and I thought my answer had been yes. Now, I’m not so sure.
I think I’m afraid because the thought of pain holds more weight than the hope of glory, because pain is something we’re not exempt of – quite the contrary – and the thought of it steals my breath.
I think my fear reveals that staying alive and safe is still more important to me than sharing God with the people I’m afraid of.
I think I’m just human.
I think I’m just weak without the Lord. At night, I’m even weak with him.
I think I’m actually just weak.
I wrote a blog last night about how my pretense as a strong woman is one of my greatest weaknesses, because only in our weakness can God be shown to be strong. I’ve seen real evidence of that in my emotional life on the Race.
But physically? Never. I’ve never even had to dream about that. The thought of dying for the gospel is just foreign to me, and my fear at the thought of it now that it’s come closer to me makes me feel embarrassed and shameful, like I should be stronger or more committed.
The only thing that outshines my fear is my pride.
I’ve lived thinking I was superwoman and super-Christian, and now that I’m finding out the opposite, I’m sad. I feel like a cheating lover; I wish I were more dedicated to the God I’ve come to adore. I wish I had the commitment skills to remain unswervingly devoted to God in the face of pain and death because I love him so much. I really do.
I wish I were faithful to him like he has been to me, not even for the sake of my pride or so you’ll comment on my inspiring dedication to the Lord or post encouraging comments on this silly World Race blog. No, none of that is the point. It’s just because I love him – but feel the weight of the imperfection of the love I have to offer and know the flighty, impulsive nature of my heart. I know all too well my capacity for unfaithfulness even in things that are hardly life-or-death.
Really, my fear proves that I’m not sure if God is worth dying for.
That really saddens me, because he was sure we were.
I feel a little like Peter must have after swearing loyalty to Jesus’ face then denying any connection to him a few hours later when the real test came – and nothing even happened to me! My fear has brought all of the grandiose words of commitment spoken in comfort, nice clothes and coffee in hand into question, making me ask myself where my real allegiances are when the going gets tough.
Do I really think God is worth dying for? Is the message of Christianity (that is, of God’s love) important enough to me to suffer torture or lose my very life to spread it? Do I love others enough to die for them to know the love I’ve tasted?
As the sun rises and my fear subsides for the day, my spirit is heavy. Not with condemnation, but sobriety. I don’t want to offer the Lord empty words. He is worthy of so much more than that. I don’t want to be a good-times-only Christian or even a Christian that loves God through trying times like poverty or a hard break-up or death of a loved one.
I want to be a life-or-death Christian, one who says, “until death do us join together in eternity” to the One I love and means it.
But if I decide to be that, if God gives me the strength to surrender my right to life itself, my life will have to look differently. If this is really worth dying for, well, that changes everything.
Because then maybe I’d be a truly eternal person with no concern for this world, and then, the next time I wake up scared in my tent, I might just say hilariously radical things like I heard Heidi Baker say in a podcast the other day.
"As I walked into the village of this unreached African tribe and looked at the people, they didn’t seem very friendly.
I thought, oh! Persecution – praise the Lord!"
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