I’m leaving.
And I’ll be gone for a while. Nearly a year, actually.
In that time, I’ll miss a year of Sunday afternoon lunches at Grandma and Papaw’s house. I’ll miss a year of old VHS Disney movies with my sister. I’ll miss a year of Dad explaining his latest projects to me. I’ll miss a year of discussions with Mom about the newest in genetics research. I’ll miss a year of old fishing tales at Pepaw and Memaw’s. I’ll miss a year of styrofoam sword fights with my little cousins. I’ll miss a year of stupid bets over bowling, putt putt, and video games with my friends. I’ll miss a year of laughter and tears with the people I’ve grown to love in the places we’ve all grown together.
I’ll miss a year of life as I have always known it.
And that—that is scary. Like terrifying.
It makes me feel as if I am being pulled in two directions. I know that I have to go. I know that God is calling me out into the mystery and wonder of The World Race; but, right now—in this moment—what I really want is to stay. And it feels like my heart and mind are caught in a deadlock with each other.
In the midst of all this internal chaos, one question keeps pushing into the forefront of my thoughts: how do you leave a life behind?
When everything and everyone that has ever meant anything to you is in one place, how do you let all of that go in order to step into a world that is foreign in every way?
In my quest to find the answer to this question I have felt the Spirit leading me to the story of the apostle Timothy. What we know about Timothy is that when he was just a teenager he left home to travel with and be mentored by Paul.
And that is pretty much it. That’s all we get for insight into the life of Timothy. We know that at some point he and Paul went their separate ways and that Paul wrote some letters to Timothy encouraging him in his faith. But—other than that—we don’t really know much more about our young apostle.
This has seemed like an incredibly frustrating dead end to come upon. Why would I feel the Spirit calling me towards the story of Timothy if the Bible gives us such little information about how Timothy got from being a young kid living with his mother and grandmother in Lystra to being a full-blown missionary in foreign lands.
We don’t hear about how Timothy struggled with his decision to leave home. We don’t get an insider view into the heart-wrenching goodbyes that he had to endure. We don’t get told that he probably had tears streaming down his face as he walked away from his mother and his grandmother that day.
What we get is that Paul wanted Timothy to join him and then suddenly Timothy was traveling throughout the cities with Paul and Silas. That’s it.
And yet, the more I stare at these couple of verses in the beginning of Acts 16, the more peace I find myself drowning in. Because, it is in these two verses that the Spirit has been revealing to me the simplicity of it all: Timothy felt the call of Jesus to go and then he went.
He just went.
I can’t promise that all of those things that we didn’t get out of the story of Timothy actually happened. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. After all, he was just a kid. And, here he was—suddenly thrust onto the cusp of leaving everything that he had ever known behind. I can’t help but imagine that there was a moment in which he found himself absolutely terrified by the thought of it all.
Just like I am now. Just like so many of us have been at some point when we felt the Spirit leading us out into the unknown.
I now realize that we don’t get those little details about Timothy because that stuff isn’t the most important part of his story.
No, the most important part of Timothy’s story is that he knew that he had to go and so he went. He answered Jesus’ call to “follow me” by simply going. By just saying “Yes, Lord.”
You see, I don’t know if there is one sure-fire answer to the question of how to leave a life behind.
But, I do know that despite the fear and the pain of the leaving, there is a joy and a peace in the going.
So—like Timothy—I’ll go. I’ll simply go.
Because Christ has called me to go. And that’s enough.
