My mom asked me the other day, “Christi, what will you do without your people? You have so many people you process life with, it worries me. What will you do?” My initial response was something uniquely made up of me being defensive and grateful.
It sounded like, “Mom I love the people I have here and they are amazing, but I can process with other people.”
I explained away my ability to process on my own as long as I feel close to say, ONE PERSON on this trip.
In a year.
This is not real, folks. This person would most likely hate me by the end of the year if they were my only person.
This morning, I was reading the story of Naomi and the journey she went on. In Ruth 1:1-17, it explains how Naomi, feeling what I imagine to be abandoned by God and pretty alone, told her daughters in law to leave her and take care of themselves. She encouraged them (maybe yelled too) and told them to more or less find new lives away from her. But one daughter in law, Ruth, didn’t leave. She said, “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.”
Whew.
I was (at this point in my day) just getting ready to pop in The Vow for the 98th time this year, but wow, THIS LOVE. This is great love. This is God’s love.
This past year, I’ve often felt lonely in a way I hadn’t really felt before. I’ve always had people. And not just ordinary people. GREAT people. But somehow, I felt something missing. Really painful loneliness set in and, at times, became really overwhelming. But pain has a crazy awful/wonderful way of changing us, doesn’t it? In fact, one of those changes that came about was making the choice to go on The World Race.
In any case, I think in that loneliness, a lie I have sometimes believed is that I have to figure out how to exist alone, just me and God, and be okay. I think that’s a cool goal, to have that sort of peace. But the fact remains that God gave us each other. He paired us together and in community. And the same God knows how much I jabber on to process the 87 emotions I felt on any given day. Really.
So today, when I need reassurance of His love, of not being alone, I lean in to hear God whisper the words of Ruth 1:16 in my ear, “Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people.” His love will be right there with me, lived out in the people around me. And even better, hopefully, lived out through me. All sorts of Love lingering around, rubbing off, all over each country I stay in.
Here we go. Lets all be brave.
