The alarm went off at 4:09AM. I rolled off my sleeping pad closer to 4:24 and finally crawled out of the tent around 4:30. We took down our tents with whispers and headlamps and packed coolers with lunch supplies while a bright pink and purple sunset peered through the kitchen window. After downing a mug of chicory coffee and some bread with jam, we loaded our bags into the four-runner and set off down the bumpy African road towards our adventure.
One year ago I would have laughed if you told me this day was set to occur in my life. Five years ago I would have cried bitter tears of sorrow because I had convinced myself that God was done with me. Not everyone can remember the day that their life split paths with the will of God but I can pinpoint the exact moment, location and conversation in which I told Him to leave me alone.
In 2009, I felt reintroduced to Jesus and reinvigorated by the wisdom, peace and love he was instilling in me. I was living on worship songs and podcasted lessons and feeling God move every hour of the day. But one night as the music died down, He told me that I would fall away. In shock, I didn’t believe and promised with my whole heart that I would never turn away from the new lifeblood in my veins. I promised that I was fully His and my life would reflect that through all of the hardships that were coming down around me. I was relying on my own strength, caught up in enthusiasm and the honeymoon stage of falling in love and pridefully ignorant of my own human heart.
But fall away I did. It wasn’t the hardships that took their toll, it was the subtle pressure of small sins that gave inches of ground at a time to selfishness, pleasure and envy. His voice grew quieter as subtle rebellion went unchecked in my life and His will became more mysterious the less I looked for it.
In the city, we took the ferry across the mile-wide inlet with white puffy clouds and palm trees foreshadowing what was to come. While waiting for the next ferry which carried our car and our driver Raihimo, we sat on a beach littered with trash and surrounded by closed up bars. I love cities and Maputo is no different because people are no different. Millions of lives and the weight they carry bump into each other and the friction results in culture, music, food, art and war. After reunion with the car and squeezing in, it was two hours of bumping, sliding, and shaking as the scenery turned greener around us. The sun rose in the sky, few cars whipped past us down the right (wrong) side of the road, and the radio played American top 40 hits from years past. After a sharp left turn, we arrived at the Maputo Elephant Reserve.
After many compromises and that one fateful conversation when I asked Him to go, I lived in suffocating isolation. In the next few years I was desperately searching for, and then frantically hiding from God and my heart was never at rest. Each decision felt like a trap, each year that went by felt like an irretrievable wasted opportunity and an endless reservoir of secrets and shame. Because I made the decision to separate myself from him, I felt foolish about going back. I tried desperately to fix my life, pull myself up by my bootstraps and brush myself off before presenting myself to the King of Heaven and Earth. I was terrified of hearing ‘I told you so’ and was too prideful to admit that He actually had given me warning that this time was coming.
What I see now is that His message had been one of wisdom, forgiveness and peace instead of the shame and condemnation the enemy was pushing on me. What I see now is that nothing can pull God away from us because His love is bigger than any barrier we create or any pit we can dig. In Psalm 32:6 David says “When I felt secure I said ‘I will never be shaken” and in verse 22, “When I felt alarm I said I am cut off from your sight! Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help.” Our perspective of God as nearer or further only indicates the clarity of our own vision because He is here.
Our team leader Tim moved from the front seat to the middle so we were now wedged four across in the two back seats. A guide in uniform carrying a gun hopped in the front seat and Raihimo said we would go to the beach before we look for the animals. It sounded like the beach was a stop on the way to where Elephants live and in Mozambique, any information about a ‘plan’ is appreciated so we didn’t push for details. After 10 minutes the car stopped and the guide jumped out to pick fruit for us to eat. We realized we weren’t on a typical Safari.
It was near the beginning of my self-orchestrated chaos that God brought the World Race into the peripheral of my vision. An acquaintance was raising money for a Passport trip run by Adventures in Missions to spend three months in Thailand. At this point in 2011, I was struggling to leave my dorm room, struggling with sleep, struggling with rational thought and struggling to see myself as a person worth anything. But God revealed His plan to bring me on the World Race for 11 months of travel and Jesus and although I told him He was ridiculous, He continued to whisper this sweet promise into my life for years.
The guide started pointing at dark lake water and our car slowed down. As we crawled along, small ears revealed themselves in the middle of the water and we piled out of the car to get closer to a family of Hippopotamus. Looking at our guide for input, he motioned us forward to the water’s edge. We stood and took in the surrounding African wilderness with the knowledge that thousand pound animals starred us down 200m away. Our squad leader Ari was wearing a stunningly beautiful bright pink dress so naturally the guide told her to step out closer since Hippos are attracted to bright colors. Not an average safari.
(When God tells you to wear a bright dress and it turns you into Hippo bait.)
Years past by in a blur of struggle and stunted growth until one day I realized I had gone months without thinking about the Race and nearly forgotten God’s promise to send me. Worse, I felt content with my life without the Race being in it and then scared of my own complacency. At this point, I had grabbed hold of Jesus’ healing as I described in A Dance of Freedom, and I had learned to live life without the chain of anxiety and the weight of depression. But big parts of my stability depended on schedules and exercise and my own mental strength, so deep down I knew I wasn’t yet surrendered enough to claim His full freedom. By the world’s standards I was pretty successful at adulting, but I knew that God wanted to bring more and I began looking for His fingerprints in my life to point the way. About 6 months later, He spoke a sharp truth directly into my heart; that I was my own biggest barrier to full life with Him AND I had become a huge barrier for people around me in knowing and leaning on Him alone. Whoops.
Read about our final destination and what we saw on the way back in Part II Here!!
