“From now on you can’t go anywhere by yourself…make sure you have at least one teammate with you…”
Announced at debrief in Romania, Month Four.
Ugh.
You wouldn’t think this would be that big of a deal…but when you desire to run…finding someone that shares that same desire at the same time that you have that desire can be quite the feat.
But luckily this came at a time when the Lord was speaking to me a LOT about what it means to submit to the authority in my life…so I complied.
Now I’m in Month 7. Month 7 in Mozambique. We live with a pastor in a community with the most delicious bread store less than a mile away, great loops to run, and we had all of this mapped out within days of arriving.
Then…Day 6 of being here…
“We have an announcement everybody…” says our team leaders…
“Yay, I love announcements…” I settled in…
Julie looks at me, “This isn’t that kind of an announcement…”
“Oh gosh…it’s a safety announcement…” Julie knew me all too well.
Drumroll.
“Due to some things that have happened and just to take precaution, from now on you have to have a local go with you if you want to go anywhere…”
As they finished this announcement, I glanced over to see 3 year old Abigail coming through the gate with a piece of bread in hand. The piece of bread that she had just gone to the store to buy.
This three year old.
Went by herself….to buy bread.
And I have to be accompanied by not one, but now two people.
It’s a weird world out here.
One that I don’t want to be naïve of…but one that I can’t live in fear of either.
I don’t know why safety stuff rubs me so wrong.
Maybe because I feel like it’s an illusion. An illusion of security.
Maybe it’s because I want to just trust the Lord.
I don’t want to be careless and flaunt things and run into danger…
But I don’t want to avoid life because something ‘could’ happen.
You know I hate locks? I can’t stand them. We have a combination lock on our tent right now, and I just boil over when I’m the first one home and have to open that thing.
Maybe partially because I really don’t care if someone were to take the stuff in my tent…it would lighten my pack…oh man, and if they took my pack…then I’d just have a daypack on travel days…that’d just be delightful.
I hate wearing my seatbelt when I’m driving…there may or may not be a warrant out for my arrest right now for that very reason…
I’ve never been one to call when I ‘safely’ made it somewhere. Mom would ask me to, but by the time I got there, I’d forget.
In turn, I’ve never worried if someone I knew got somewhere. I just trust that they will…and that I’ll be alerted if they don’t.
I don’t think it’s because I don’t care. I do care. It just isn’t a worry for me.
But maybe it should be.
Maybe out here, being placed in the midst of a squad with its fair share of future mothers that will demand their children to ‘call when they get there’, maybe I’m supposed to find a balance.
Maybe between the extremes of no concern and overly concerned, I’ll find a place where I’m to land.
Because I’d never want someone to think I didn’t care.
But I don’t want someone to freak out if they can’t call me because they know I’m probably having an anxiety attack not knowing where they are.
Somewhere in the middle. Somewhere where they know that I care, but that I trust.
And truth be told…I want to do about everything by myself.
But the Lord doesn’t want me to.
He wants me to wait for people sometimes.
He wants me to die to my desire in certain moments and do life with somebody. To surrender my timetable so I can be apart of someone else’s.
Even Jesus sent out His disciples two by two…
Because maybe it is safer…
Not even just physically safer…
But spiritually and emotionally safer as well…
I may forever hate safety announcements…
But I can put up with them and comply with them and even learn and grow from them…
Because it only makes me ever more hopeful for the life to come…
And I may be wrong, but I really believe that I will never hear the Lord say in heaven… “Gather round children…I have a safety announcement…”
And that makes me really happy…
