I’m out of problems.
I’ve addressed every deep issue that I struggle with. Everything has been brought to light, admitted in confidence to people I know I can trust, worked through, & in the end put to rest. There are no new or old problems that I’m dealing with. There’s nothing for me to “fix” & there’s nothing that’s causing me unbearable pain.
Every day when I wake up, the first thoughts to surface in my head have nothing to do with despair, regret, shame, nor guilt. Rather, I wake up feeling a totally-encompassing lightness. There’s nothing wrong with me & I’m free to climb out of bed & start my day.
My team set a goal this month to be physically fit & thus several of us have agreed to going running or walking in the mornings around 7am. So some mornings I wake up & feel like exercising so I go and do that. If my body isn’t ready for exercise, I don’t push it. I don’t nfeel a dark need to push my body to a place it doesn’t need to go.
We have a phenomenal cook on our team (Kaycie) who has been in charge of making all of our delicious meals & I’ve found myself eating normal portions at a slow pace. There’s no rush to get more food & there’s no inner pressure to eat less food.
When I look in the mirror the first thing I notice is my eyes & how much they portray my current state of emotional-being. It’s not until I’m walking away from my reflection that I think to check whether or not my stomach looks more flat than the last time I checked. I hardly even notice my acne anymore.
When I’m informed 20 minutes before bible study that I’ll be in charge of preaching the lesson (on a topic I’m not well-versed in) or when our host’s young son asks me for the 15th time whether I’m done watching my tv episode, reading my book, or thinking & if we “can go play NOW?!?” I no longer feel the need to run away to deal with my outrageous burst of anger elsewhere. In fact, I no longer HAVE an outrageous burst of anger. Instead, I calmly, in my head, listen to the quiet but firm voice that advises me to breathe. I take my time, think through my response, listen to the wisdom of the voice, & then respond.
Nowadays, I accept challenges freely, willingly, & admittedly, with a little excitement. Even if it means going out on a limb & trying something i’m not confident in, I still give it a try. I also no longer feel the urgent need to move on & find something more exciting than what I’m experiencing in the here and now. I’m okay with simply continuing to exist.
In any given moment of the day I find myself…dare I say it….happy.
I realized this strange phenomenon last week.
What’s going on? What’s happening to me?
I’m happy. I’m satisfied. I’m peaceful. There’s no secret I need uncover, nor any cryptic brokenness to be discovered within my soul.
I’ve never experienced anything like this feeling before.
After bringing up my newly discovered & questionably stable state of mind to a few of my teammates, it was decided that what I’m experiencing was to be expected. We realized that anyone who made the change I made at the beginning of the month could be expected to go through what I have been going through.
So, what then was the change I made?
It was a change of heart & a deliberate change of mind. My entire purpose in life was re-oriented at the beginning of the month. After one very long & revealing (on my part) conversation with my teammate, Mary, I realized a mind blowing error in my faith.
Up until that point, My relationship with God was entirely based on emotion & feeling rather than truth.
When it boiled down to it, every time I wasn’t feeling God in my life I would get scared, stop seeking him, & take matters back into my own hands.
If God wasn’t currently proving himself to me, then I wasn’t interested. If I couldn’t FEEL him, then I had subconsciously decided that I could not trust him & he must not be real. So I would stop truly pursuing him & would put on the Christian act until the next time I felt challenged in my faith to step out.
I’ve been playing the part of a Christian my entire life & it’s taken almost 7 months of the World Race for me to finally realize it.
This revelation brought about a resolve to restart my walk with Jesus.
At that moment – sitting on my bed, with the noisily oscillating fan cooling the beads of sweat that rolled steadily down my face & my back, staring at Mary across from me, I thought to myself, “I could do one of two things at this point- I could give into my fear, accept the thinking that because I can’t feel God, he must not be real, leave the World Race early, & then start over back in the states….OR, like Mary heavily suggested, I could start over again with God but this time do it right.”
If I decided to renounce my faith, that would mean succumbing to the nothingness & meaninglessness of a life without Jesus & the never-ending love he represents. I would be accepting for my soul the emptiness that I had spent so much of my life fighting off. I knew that decision would basically lead to ultimate misery & that after returning home, I wouldn’t be long for this world.
But! On the other hand, if I decided to start over with God, that would mean that I would be totally entrusting my life into the hands of an all-knowing being that my mind would never be able to truly understand. That I would have to learn to trust him, & that my attempts to control my life would no longer cut it. I would be doing something i’d never tried before. Accepting God also meant that I would have to come to terms with eternity & the idea that even though this life that I’ve worked so hard in would end one day & that a new one that would last forever would start afterwords…yikes. Eternity terrifies me & fills me with anxiety- I still am not sure why. Probably a trust issue.
Going through this restart would mean giving up the small, controllable version of God that I’ve always kept in my pocket & accepting the limitless, undefined, un-comprehensibly large God that the Bible teaches us about. I would no longer be in control of my religion.
After a while of serious consideration, I decided to choose restarting with this new version of God. There is something I had been missing all my life & deliberately choosing emptiness was not going to work for me. As hard as this decision was (in my head, in a way, both choices were difficult in their own way), something deep within me told me I had chosen correctly.
This meant changing my foundation. It was no longer to be based on emotions. Now, it would be based on truth- God’s truth.
My team had started a bible study in Zambia & after finishing the book of Hosea, we decided that for the next month, we would go through the book of Ezekiel. So, every day I’ve been studying Ezekiel with them, I’ve been spending time in prayer for others & myself, I’ve made God my fallback plan whenever something bad happens.
Now, when I find myself slipping, instead of taking it on my own head, I ask God to help me. I’ve started asking him to fight my battles for me. I’ve been putting the armor of God on (Ephesians 6:10) every single day. I’ve been turning my focus to God rather than letting it settle on the trivial things of the day.
A couple days ago during my team’s meeting with an organization called Scripture Union here in Harare, Zimbabwe, the national director mentioned a part of their program called “Thuthuka” (pronounced “two-THOO-kah”) which means “growing up”. As soon as the director said the word, God gave me a spiritual nudge & proceeded to point out that that was exactly what I was doing.
In all of my attempts to put my focus on God, I had completely forgotten to think about myself & what was happening with me. But that’s exactly what’s going on! At 23 years old, I’ve finally started growing up spiritually. I’ve started listening to God first before myself, I’ve started thinking before speaking, & I find myself looking forward to learning about God & life more than I am focused on numbing myself from my reality. By forgetting myself & focusing on God first, I’ve found peace.
There’s so much more to be learned here & I know I’m on a pathway that doesn’t end until my life does. I’m so thankful for this new version of God & I’m so thankful for his faithfulness to me. His patience exceeds all my expectations & I’m finding that he is truly all that I need. Even though I don’t FEEL him everyday, I continue to pursue him. This new foundation that I’m building is what I’ve been looking for all along.
I’ll let you all know how it goes! Please be praying for me to stay focused on God even when I don’t feel him. Pray also that I would continue to have the motivation to seek him out every day no matter what. It’s quite a change to be relying on his strength rather than my own but I have to say, it’s the best change of my life so far. If you have questions or want more details, feel free to contact me & I’d love to fill you in!
Until next time,
~ Vashti W.
fundraising update: I still need another $2,080 until I reach my final deadline! I haven’t been contacted yet about not making the deadline (but then again I haven’t had wifi since the deadline passed so who really knows?) so I think I still have a grace period in which I can fundraise the rest. So, if you are able to donate & would like to, please consider helping me reach my goal! Just click the “support me!” Link & follow the directions. Thank you everyone! Your support means the world to me!
