There’s a song I was introduced to this month that has not stopped replaying in my mind since I heard it. A repeated refrain in the song is, “I could hold onto who I am and never let You change me from the inside. I could be safe here in Your arms and never leave home, never let these walls down. But You have called me higher, You have called me deeper.” We’re finishing up our time here in Nicaragua and there’s nothing that speaks more truth to what this month has been about for me than these lyrics. As we head to Honduras for month three, a huge chunk of my heart is being left behind in Granada. However, it’s not without growing pains that I can sit here and tell you I have completely fallen in love with this city, it’s people and all that God has allowed us to be apart of. Despite the challenges we faced, I know one day I will be back.
Our first night, my teammate Alleigh and I were mugged walking back to our hostel. A couple days later, the other 40-something people on our squad arrived to commence the array of activities, excitement and chaos that would be “All Squad Month.” After a week of debriefing month one, my team and another all girls team made the boat trip to Zapatera Island to begin ministry building a church. The fishing community on the island lives without running water, toilets, showers, and virtually no electricity. Despite only having a little, the Pastor, his family, and the others who live there were extremely generous and welcoming. They showed us the love of Christ like I’ve never seen it before. We loved getting to know them and became very close, however, the living conditions were hard on many of us. To say ours eyes were opened would be an understatement. It was on the island when God first revealed to me the extent of my selfishness and my tendency to only want to do what’s comfortable and easy. As the month went on, I was shown the same things when it came to working with my team and pursuing intentional relationships with them and others on the squad. I was shown that I was doing the same things I had always done because I was afraid of the discomfort and work it requires to change and do something different.
In moments of self reflection, I heard God asking me, “Who do you want to be? What kind of life do you want to have?” It’s easy to stay the same or fall back into old behaviors. What’s hard is changing. Sure, we all want to grow, but often times we shrink back from the discomfort that comes with it. We get our feet wet and find out the waters cold or the surfs too rough and begin to tell ourselves, “It wasn’t so bad sitting in my chair back up the shore. I was comfortable there; I was safe.” I’ve had many of those moments this month. I’ve wanted to shrink back. I’ve wanted to stay in my little place of safety where I didn’t have to face the hard stuff. But God kept pushing back at me asking once again, “Who do you want to be?” Sometimes it’s easy to loose sight of our reason for starting something when the going gets tough. I had to be reminded that I said ‘yes’ to the World Race because I have a passion to serve people but also because I wanted to grow, to change and to learn more about God and myself. I was also reminded that the process of growth is never an easy one.
I don’t believe that anyone particularly likes finding out the ugly bits of themselves. It’s hard when God begins knocking on the caverns of our heart that we wish would never see the light of day and it’s even harder still to look ourselves in the mirror and admit there are things we need to change. It’s uncomfortable, we feel unsafe and we feel exposed. But if there’s one thing I’m learning, it’s that God does not call us to be safe or comfortable and in order to become the person we were created to be and reach the place we were called to be, we’re going to have to walk through the hard stuff. All through the Word we see this with men like Noah, Abraham, Moses, Paul and of course, Jesus. I don’t believe we are any different. Nothing good ever comes easy. We can all source from our life a time when things were tough and all we’d rather do was not push through, try a different way, or even give the burden to someone else. Maybe for you, that time is right now. Maybe like me, you’ve entered a season of life where you’ve experienced some challenge. Maybe you’ve started a new job and are discouraged by the work load, or the position itself. Maybe your challenge was unanticipated and you’re struggling to understand why all of this is happening. Whether it’s personal, relational, spiritual, financial or anything else, one thing is true, God makes beauty from ashes. Whatever you’re going through, there’s a reason for it and if we push through the discomfort, we will get to see all the goodness on the other side. He tells us, the trials we endure now is nothing compared to the glory that will be revealed to us. (Romans 8:18) So we can hold onto who we are, we can stay comfortable in our safety or we can embrace the discomfort that comes with growth and be people who change our world by allowing God to change us. Who do you want to be?
