Something I have been challenged with over and over again on this journey is to let people in and give them an opportunity to help me. For me dependence is counter intuitive. You would think that with the amount of team sports I have played that I would be great at depending on people I trust, but that is not the case. I like to take on tasks and complete them alone. I like for people to depend on me for things but I don’t allow myself to rely on others.
As I have pressed in to ask the Lord why I can’t seem to allow myself to let people in He has sweetly reminded me that he created me to be independent. He didn’t create people to be forced into loving him and depending on him. He created us to choose to depend and love him. Key word is choose. This choice to depend means I have to humble myself enough to give up control and to act in obedience. It is a choice to let people in and allow myself to be humble enough to rely on others. To live in true community, each person has to press in and love each other even when they might not want to.
One of the ways the Lord is challenging me In this is through team changes. At the beginning of this month my team changed from the Fiercely Loved ladies to the mixed team of Grafted In. The sweet part about our team change is that the Lord gifted me with two of my old teammates on this new team. He gave me Brook as my new team leader and AbbyLin as my accountability pal. The lord revealed that he knows me well enough to know that I need people to keep me accountable to being real and I know these two ladies will call me out when necessary and remind me of who I am when I start believing lies or forget.
He also challenged me with true dependence when our leadership proposed a route change. They asked us to pray about changing our last months country from Albania to Spain to walk part of the Camino De Santiago Compostela. The first time I heard about the Camino was when I was a junior in High School and since then I have dreamed of walking the Camino. So you would have thought that when this proposal was introduced that I would have been excited about it, right?? Well I wasn’t.
My pride took over and immediately I was filled with thoughts like I don’t want to do this with other people. This was something I wanted to do for myself and by myself. I also wanted to walk the whole thing and knowing that we were not going to be able to do that was another turn off for me. My selfish desires were getting in the way of what the Lord has been asking me to press into. He has been asking me to choose to press into people and community so of course He would use something that I have been desiring to do on my own to challenge me in this choice of dependence. So needless to say when it came time to vote my vote was a yes for the change, and no surprise there, our route has changed. We will be walking the French route of the Camino for two weeks during our last month of ministry. The Lord clearly told me that he wants to use the journey of the Camino to help propel each of my squad mates into the journey he has for us for the rest of our lives. As a sort of seal over this season and a launching into what is next.
Ok Lord I hear you loud and clear. Dependence is good and I don’t need to do this life on my own. You created me to be in community and I am choosing to press in. Just one more way I am walking into the wild abandon you have called me into this year.
