For years now, my sweet sister from YWAM and I have had conversations about writing a blog together. Now that I am on the race we decided, hey lets actually do this thing. So below you will find a little clip from each of us about where we are at in life and while it may seem worlds apart, its been very similar yet opposite. Lexie is learning to find the gold in the ordinary and I am learning to find the real in the extraordinary. So here goes, this is our hearts and we love that we get to share it with all of you.
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-LEX-
Hi, allow me to introduce myself- my name is Lexie VanSolkema. I am from and currently live in a small town just outside of Grand Rapids. Brandi and I met while in YWAM about four years ago. What many people do not know is that Brandi and I actually became friends over scrubbing toilets together. Everyday from 3-5 we’d haul our caddy into the restroom, blast Taylor Swift’s latest and deep clean. There’s something about picking hair, mold and cockroaches out of shower drains that bonds people and that’s probably why Brandi and I are still close.
Over the last four years, Brandi and I have lived two very different lives. After YWAM finished, Brandi told me that the Lord called her back home, back to Silverton so that she could practice ministry in a place that was familiar but also now- extremely uncomfortable. I can remember praising the good Lord that I was not heading back to my small town but rather moving to Chicago to pursue a ministry degree.
Fast forward to present day and in a crazy turn of events that could only be God, I am now living back at home while Brandi is traveling the world. It’s funny how our lives have flipped, but I honestly am so grateful for it. Brandi has been such a steady source of encouragement for me as I navigate life at home again because she knows what it feels like. And that’s why when she asked me to speak truth into seasons of staying, I honestly was a little taken aback. But then I realized, the Lord has been putting one simple phrase on my heart and if it only encourages one person, that’s enough.
“Call out gold amongst the mediocrity, Lex.”
This is what the Lord spoke to me late one night as I drove home from an awful shift at the nursing home. It was very blunt, very direct and so I knew it couldn’t be me. But the phrase confused me, what was “gold” and how was I to call it out?
I’ve wrestled with this concept for a solid three months now and it hit me over the head the other day. Jon from the Bible is a prime example of what calling out gold looks like. I mean the man’s life was absolutely butchered. His wife and his children died in front of him and he lost everything he owned. He had every right to question God, but rather he chose to call God good. He found the good, or the gold, in his circumstance and spoke it out even when he did not understand.
I think when we decide to follow Christ we give up our right to understand everything. Which honestly sucks sometimes, but also I mean that’s what faith truly is, isn’t it? Yes sometimes our circumstances are less than ideal, sometimes we do not always understand what God is up to, but there is purpose to every season we walk through. Now granted, I am not experiencing what Job went through, but the Lord is showing me that the mundane that life currently holds for me has purpose- more than that, there is gold in it.
Instead of looking at life through a lens of jealousy or resentment towards current circumstances, it’s choosing to find the good in every situation. It is choosing to say, “God is still good and here is why….” when life hands you sour lemons. It is choosing to focus upon the calling set before you. It is choosing to lay down pride in order to step into the fullness the Lord has to offer.
And is that going to be easy. HA. No. I’m a firm believer that the Christian lifestyle was never meant to be easy. We were called to take up our cross and follow Him, come what may. And that means we follow in the good stuff, in the tough stuff, in the crazy stuff and in the hard stuff.
Is it worth it? Absolutely, because when you get a glimpse at how deep Christ’s love is for you it becomes so much easier to say, “God, I don’t understand why this is happening but I trust you’re in this mess.”
Because we know there’s purpose for everything and sometimes that purpose means doing things we just don’t wanna do and calling out gold in it- there is gold even in mediocrity.
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-Bran-
It’s so easy to get caught up in wishing we were everywhere we aren’t. Over the last two and a half years of being in Silverton, I often dreamed about being elsewhere… well now I’m elsewhere and according to society, my life should be pretty perfect. I mean really, who wouldn’t want to be traveling the world for 11 months? I’d have to agree with that, but let me be the first to tell you, it’s not all glitz and glam, and my life sure as heck ain’t perfect.
I’m sure all of us that dream about other places have followed Instagram pages or blogs about traveling. And it’s filled with all of those perfectly edited photos of the coolest places and the funniest moments, making all of those places and all of the moments look absolutely flawless.
What’s behind those pictures though? What’s life honestly like?
It’s not being able to drink all the coffee or buy all the pastries because you’re unemployed and you have no source of income.
It’s wearing the same outfits over and over again because you only have 3 pairs of pants and 3 shirts because that’s all that could fit into your backpack.
It’s wearing the same pants 4 days in a row while you wait for your other pair(s) to dry on the clothesline because dryers are a luxury.
It’s not being in control of what you’re able to eat…all the carbs y’all and all the mystery meat. Also everything is labeled in a different language so you never know how the cooking will turn out.
It’s being so out of control that things you didn’t even care about become big things for you. As vain and ridiculous as it sounds, and I never thought these words would come from me, I’m struggling with my physical image and it’s because I want to feel normal and I want to be in control of something.
It’s not knowing when you’ll get to talk to your loved ones again and not knowing who will still be there when you get back because life doesn’t pause while you’re gone.
All of our seasons, no matter where we are, are life-changing experiences though and I wouldn’t want to persuade anyone away from enjoying it. Heck no. I’d say run towards it with great expectations, but be aware of the common misconception about how great everyone else’s life is and that our lives would be so much easier and everything would be perfect if we just got to travel forever, because that’s what the blogs tell us, right? It’s not true though. Foreign life is real, it’s gross, it’s uncomfortable, it’s avoiding showers because they are cold, it’s sometimes peeing your pants from laughing so hard and regretting it because those were your only clean pair, and it’ll be days before you can wear them again (jump back up to the lack of a dryer), it’s being dead tired from having to walk 8 miles throughout the city to get everywhere in a day, its the heartbreaking goodbyes to the new friends. So enjoy the season you’re in right now.
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Currently, I am stepping into month 2 of the World Race while Lexie is going to nursing school in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We both are learning a ton where we are but we also want to call out that the glitz & glam life may look like is not always the reality but call it out call out the gold and call out the reality, there is a time for it all.
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.”
??Ecclesiastes? ?3:1-15? ?NIV??
