In the last week and a half, God has brought me through some crazy processing, leading to a giant personal leap and some massive growth. I want to share with you some of the journaling I've been doing as I continue to navigate this new and unfamiliar trail that God is inviting me on. My disclaimer before you begin reading is that this is long, but it involves some HUGE breakthrough. My hope is that this can encourage you to ask what things God might want to break in your own life that you never thought could be broken: unhealthy patterns of thinking, habits, insecurities, and so much more. I am opening my heart up completely before you all in posting this, because that is what God is teaching me to do here and I feel like a caged bird that has been set free to soar at last (which is why this sharpie-drawn tattoo is so meaningful to me)! I want to proclaim and share that freedom with each and every one of you!
One of my goals for this trip was “Growth in interdependence and relational ability”. Ha! I have just lived through two and a half months of very tight living quarters with never fewer than 15 other people at a time, sharing one or two bathrooms between all of us. I have been asked to break down walls around my heart and let myself be truly seen and known. Transparency. It is a word that has terrified, intrigued, and captivated me. It is a word that means nothing is hidden, nothing is held back, nothing is concealed – like a clear shower curtain or a light turned on in a dark room at the most unexpected moment. There is huge vulnerability in that word. There are many things that I did not want to have to reveal, that I wanted to have the control of keeping hidden. Yet I can now say that “transparency” is a word I am learning to embody in the way I live and interact with those around me, and I have never felt more free in my life than I do right now. One of the issues that has come up repeatedly during this journey is the social anxiety that has haunted my family for generations and more subtly haunted my own life. New social settings terrify me. When I arrived in Florida two and a half months ago for launch, I was scared out of my skin. I struggled with the most intense bouts of loneliness, insecurity, and fear of people that I have ever faced. I was surrounded by 40 other young adults, my squad that I would be spending the next year with. In the midst of fighting to build relationships, fighting to find my place, fighting to realize my voice, I fell flat on my face. All the growth and confidence I have gained in the last few years during my time at Portland State was stripped away and I was completely broken and raw. I could no longer pretend that I had the strength to undertake this adventure on my own. I needed God. I needed healing. I needed transformation.
My journal entry from January 11 reads, “I want to and expect to change this year. Did I think a year of fun and ease would lead to that? I think not! The challenge is what leads to change. This won’t be easy – it can’t or it couldn’t change me to the extent I’m hoping it will! Father, give me grace! I feel now like I am at ground zero – the only direction I can go from here is up. Closer to, more like Jesus.”
Slowly but surely my shell began to crack. I began to learn to trust my teammates and the other team that we were living with in Guatemala. It was a painful process. Through it, old insecurities resurrected with each passing day. Insecurity about my past, being home-schooled and feeling trapped in that label and stereotype. Insecurity about the fact that I’ve never had a boyfriend or even been kissed. Insecurities that screamed, “You are alone, you are different from everyone else and nobody knows how to relate to you.” Slowly the lies began to unravel as truth was poured into my heart. My teammates told me that I brought so much to the team, that my perspective was vital and beautiful. They reaffirmed their love for me with each passing day until I began to actually believe it. They empowered me to step up out of my insecurity, and take the risk of leading worship on my guitar (I am still learning to play and was so afraid to take those amateur skills into the spotlight). They called out the gifts they saw in me and challenged me to take greater risks, because they believed in me.
But more importantly, my Father was working in my heart. With each freshly-exposed insecurity, I came running back to His arms, broken and bleeding and afraid. And each time He picked me back up, dusted me off, bandaged my scrapes and tipped my chin up to look into my eyes and tell me how beautiful I am to Him.
At the end of month one, my team and our sister team took a long bus ride from Puerto Barrios, Guatemala, to La Libertad, El Salvador. I remember the bus ride vividly. I was in the back seat between two of my friends from the other team. For the last hour or two, I listened to worship music and closed my eyes as the breeze rushed around me from the open windows all around. I felt completely safe and loved and surrounded by family in that moment. Even with the deep sadness of saying goodbye to our new friends in Guatemala, I felt peace in being with these two teams.
We spent the weekend at a hostel just minutes from the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. A third team, the team that we would be spending our month in El Salvador with, joined us there, as well as our three squad leaders. Suddenly a fresh wave of fear overwhelmed me until it paralyzed me. I began to panic. I had poured everything into the relationships of the past month. Over that weekend, I felt that all my hard work was suddenly for naught. I was back at ground zero yet again! The team we had spent the month with was moving on to a different location, and I did not have the closeness and sense of safety with the new team we were partnering with.
A new issue arose as well that I had not anticipated. I realized that I felt especially intimidated by the guys on the other team. For the first few weeks of our month in El Salvador, I coped with that intimidation by avoiding them, pouring my attention and energy into the girls around me and finding so much joy and freedom in those relationships. Meanwhile, God was breaking much of my social phobia, even in the ministries we were doing. I continued to find greater joy and freedom in worship, especially as I was asked to lead and step up in new ways in the church services and programs in the community. I felt so affirmed in my musical giftings by the people around me, and it went miles in boosting my confidence and willingness to step up! On top of that, my Spanish continued to improve and I felt empowered to practice and speak it, as I understood the language better than many of those in our group and I would receive frequent questions: “Hey Jill, what is he saying?” or “How do you say…?” Yet the rift between me and my brothers on the other team began to plague me more and more. I felt God whispering gently to me, “There is more.” I had come to a point of total honesty and rawness before my sisters. But I had not even attempted to build relationships with my brothers and was terrified of letting them see that same rawness. God showed me how much I was missing out on by not seeking out the perspective and wisdom of the guys that He had put in my life. There was so much growth happening as a result of relationships with my sisters, but there was so much more growth I was missing out on because of my lack of relationships with my brothers. One of the guys specifically intimidated me, simply because I had great respect for him and did not know how to relate to him. Yet I longed for that ice to be broken and that fissure to be filled.
My Father was asking me to take a leap that I had never considered taking before. To “cut the crap”, so to speak, and be transparent in a whole new way. I was terrified. I began to journal incessantly, staying awake until 1 or 2 in the morning every night as I processed and prayed through the things that were heavy on my heart.
Finally the moment came. I remembered a time earlier in the month when we visited a beautiful waterfall on our free day and my friends began to climb the rocks to jump off into the pool from a height of near 20 feet. I jumped at the opportunity to scale the rocks, but when I got to the top and realized that there was only one option for getting back down, terror enveloped me. As long as my toes were still curled securely on the rocky ledge, I was still safe, still dry. But I had to leap. And once I leapt, there was no going back. No escape from the clear, cool water below.
Yet that was exactly what I wanted! I woke up at 6 am on a Saturday morning and began to write a letter. Insecurity and honesty and brutal transparency spilled out onto the page. “I am realizing that I have a lot of fear of relationships with guys and it keeps becoming more apparent to me. In our squad, I’ve pursued relationships with the girls and held the guys at arms’ length, cuz that’s how I know to live and how I feel comfortable. I grew up believing a lot of lies about how girls and guys should interact, that dating is basically a sin and probably flirting as well, and since I was shy and didn’t know how to find a balance, I kind of gave up trying and filled my life mostly with girls… I often feel like I have something to prove. I do not want to be seen by guys as weak – ever. Which inhibits me from allowing you guys to help me, serve me, encourage me, lift heavy things for me, help me out of the truck, and be my brothers. I don’t want to be that way. God has been breaking my heart about the way my arrogance and fear is getting in the way of relationships.” I filled nearly three pages of my journal with the letter.
And then came the leap. That morning, I pulled my brother aside and read it to him, every page, every word, tears and emotion overflowing as I took the first step on the road to freedom. The plunge into the sparkling waters so far below my trembling perch.
The road to complete freedom in interdependence and whole relationships is far from over. But I am so grateful for the distance I have come! I feel like I have stepped into a whole new realm of possibilities, and am on a new and uncharted path. At times it terrifies me. Last night I lay my head in my team leader’s lap and whispered, “I’m so scared.” I don’t know how to navigate this trail! She reminded me softly of the mountain that I climbed with two of the other girls a week ago. We traversed the looming hill through thorns, barbed wire, swarming bees and a bat-infested tunnel until we reached the summit, scouting out a trail that had never been traveled before.
“Jill, were you afraid when you climbed the mountain?” Kate asked.
“No,” I replied immediately.
“Because your sisters were with you,” she said gently. “Your sisters are going to be with you through every step of this process.”
