When I heard about plans for Cambodia, I didn’t feel excited. I was honestly in shock when I found out my team and my sister team was being separated from the rest of the squad. It was a really hard point for me on my race and being split up just seemed to be the cherry on top. I went from feelings of numbness and telling myself I didn’t care, to disappointment then bitterness. I didn’t want to say goodbye to the people who have become like family the past 6 months. I knew how much I would miss hearing their laughs, all the late night talks in the kitchen, and just getting to live life with the people I love. I wasn’t prepared to have to say goodbye so soon. Being suddenly stripped of community is hard, but I validated my feelings of it not being fair to let myself sit in disappointment. Something my squad leader told me: your emotions are like a 3 year old. You wouldn’t let a 3 year old drive the car, but you also wouldn’t stick your 3 year old in the trunk if they were screaming. It stopped me and made me think. What was I doing? Yup, I was letting the screaming 3 year old drive the car. I wasn’t processing how I was feeling. I let my emotions decide how Cambodia was going to be. I limited what God could do. Thinking immediately that Cambodia wouldn’t be as good cause I didn’t get to live with the rest of my friends was pouring out of a lack of trust. A lack of trust that God’s plan isn’t as good as my own plan.
I honestly laugh at the irony of it all. DUDE. Trusting in God’s plan is what brought me here! Trusting in God’s faithfulness is what provided me with the community that made the news of leaving them so hard to bare!
It’s funny. Surrender is such a gift. When God asks us to give up something, it is so that He can give us better. He is literally trying to give us a gift! And so many times we don’t want it. I didn’t want to accept the gift God was trying to give me. I could only see what He was asking me to leave behind, and I wasn’t ready to leave it all. When something seems so good, I can’t imagine that anything could be better. But God always surprises me EVERY time. Because every time I trust him and let go, He provides abundantly more. Just like He did with the race!
By choosing to follow Jesus, I made the choice to be willing to sacrifice things of this life and parts of myself. This is so that I can grow more fully into the identity He has created me to be and step into the perfect relationship He desires with me. We are promised that we will be repaid a thousandfold, but it requires commitment. And sometimes it’s hard. There is no gain without cost. I cannot gain in knowledge, or fitness, or a skill, or grow closer to God or invest in relationships unless I give up time elsewhere to instead spend time on the thing I want to gain in. That’s just how it works. Even still, there is never cost I do not count when God asks me to give up something. I gave up comfort, free time, relationships, a steady job, and a whole lot of control to enter into a season of reckless abandon. And the costs I count remind me why this is worth it! Cause He has never asked me to give up something that He does not provide something even better in return. It may cost me, but that is nothing compared to the gain I have in Jesus.
I’m a flawed human. We all are. This isn’t always easy. And I will mess up. And I’m learning. And I’m growing. This is life in Jesus. And it’s a wild ride.
XOXO, Cat
“Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” Luke 14: 27-30
