Before I left to come on the race I was challenged by my friend, Jamie, to get someone to teach me to juggle somewhere along the way. To be honest, I had totally brushed it aside as a random challenge that probably wouldn’t get met.
There we were at the airport in Bucharest for the afternoon, waiting for our first flight on our way to AFRICA. Like little kids stuck in one place for hours and hours, a few of us started playing with the gravel that we were sitting beside. Before I knew it, the awesome Steve-O was teaching me how to juggle. He even loaned his juggling balls to me for the month (after I promised to practice). Little did I know that God had big lessons in store for me.
The long waits in all the airports on the way to the hostel in Johannesburg gave me the perfect opportunity to start my juggling career. My squad can tell you how bad my hand-eye coordination really is — it was the source of much entertainment as I consistently dropped each ball I tried to catch. And yet, I kept tossing them in the air, determined to add one more ball, one more toss to the equation. Nothing was going to stop me…
Our month of ministry begins. Soon enough, a whole week had passed and the balls barely had any air time. Remembering my promise, I resolved to practice at least the 10 minutes Steve had set as the bare minimum for each day.
Same practice balls, same girl, but something had definitely changed. The boldness/determination/confidence I had that first day had disappeared. I could hardly bring myself to toss that third ball into the air. I was afraid of failing, afraid that I wasn’t going to catch that ball and that it was going to fall to the ground.
That apprehension really caught me off guard: “Where in the world did this fear come from?? Silly. Of course the ball’s going to fall to the ground. But if you never throw the ball in the air, then you’ll never be able to practice catching it. How will you ever learn to juggle that way?”
So, that was a ton of detail about something seemingly insignificant but stick with me a little while longer…
At the end of last month, I had a new found confidence from getting a taste of the freedom in Christ that I had only heard of before — freedom to be fully loved and accepted and significant although I’m still in the process of becoming all that God made for me to be. But as the days and weeks went on, I found myself afraid and apprehensive about truly giving everything up to follow after Christ – something that I had been so excited to do just a couple weeks ago.
It’s starting to make sense to me why God tells us over and over again not to be afraid or anxious about anything. Sure, I’ll continue to fail at fixing my focus on Christ and I’ll keep making blunders as I try to love God and love people. None of that changes the love that God has for me. None of my failures will stop Him from meeting me each morning with brand new mercies for the day. But if I don’t even try to walk down the path that He has planned for me, I’ll never get anywhere. Just like how I will never be able to juggle if I let fear stop me from throwing the third ball into the air.
