Oh how I need You….
So every once in awhile, despite my best attempts to keep them in, my emotions get the best of me and come to the surface.
Oftentimes when this happens, it takes awhile to detect the source of the feelings of being overwhelmed. It seems more and more lately, it is related to packing up my backpack and experiencing the world. In preparing emotionally for the upcoming year on the World Race,
my heart has felt as though it has jumped ahead of me, attached to a place I have yet to discover and let etch it’s mark permanently on
my heart. There will be moments when I just take a second or two, look around my environment, including people and places I love so dearly, and feel like I am just not where I am supposed to be. There is this indesc
ribable ache in my heart, longing for this culture and life I have not even experienced, feeling as an alien in my own country, state, and hometown. It’s not constant, and honestly when that starts to rise up again, my instinct is to try to shove that thought back down, because part of me hates the idea of my home no longer feeling like my home base.
I absolutely love my physical home, in every sense of the word.
The little house I live in with my three crazy, beautiful, obnoxious, hard-headed, endearing sisters-in-Christ is more than I can stand sometimes, but generally more than I could have hoped for. My family relationships, like most relationships, have not always been easy, and in large a result of my own decisions, but I have come to learn how much I would be missing without them in my life and have learned a lot about how to love through that. Wouldn’t trade them for the world. My church family has been there right there with me last few years, showing me grace, teaching me about my Savior, how to love each other, and welcomed me with open arms when I was at my worst. Even my hometown, Kansas City, Missouri is something to miss. While it’s not necessarily the prettiest place in the U.S., the rivers and trees and camping are enough to make me return to joy like a little girl again anytime I go back, and I have so many memories of adventure and discovering freedom in this city.
Regardless of how much I love this place, and how many great memories and relationships I have built up here, I just have this feeling in my soul that this is not always going to have that same sense of security and comfort that it did before. That there is a very strong possibility that my response to life will flip. I imagine going to another country, the air plane about to descend, looking all around at the landscape and life-giving colors of some foreign country, and letting out a sigh of relief that I have come back again, finally. That this piece of my heart and soul has reunited again. This could all be purely romanticized in my head, but regardless of the truth behind that statement, everything in me resonates with that image.
One of my dearest friends, in the midst of one of my “Pre-Race emotional breakdowns” I was forewarned about, shared with me the concept that it is alright to be grieving the life I have right now, to be letting go of most everything I have come to love, the relationships and love and family, the culture and way of life and comforts, even the ways I know of relating to God. This is, best I can tell, God’s way of preparing me as I go, a rainstorm after rainstorm of thoughts and emotions as opposed to a torrential downpour coming the day I take off on the air plane. More than that though, it is my heart learning to attach to the One Place it should be, putting first things first.
All of this, I believe is directly related to my willingness to just surrender to my Father. Am I willing to let go of all of the fears I have and the desires and dreams I have for my own life? I was confronted directly with this question last week. I had the privilege of listening to this passionate, purpose-filled woman who has spent a good portion of her life on the mission field. She was giving an account of some of her experiences, and one thing she mentioned hit me at my core. She shared how earlier in her life, she realized, “It wasn’t a matter of whether or not I was going to respond to God’s call for me to become a missionary, but was I going to surrender my life to Him?” Ouch….
I am not sitting hear telling you that in this moment, as I sit here on my couch in my cozy house with man-controlled temperature, typing up this blog, listening to music that stirs my soul to worship,that I am one-hundred percent positive that I am going to spend my life overseas. That is not the point of the rambling. I am however, replaying the circumstances that followed that same evening, reinforcing that question to my heart, convincing me that God was trying to get my attention. I am sharing my heart and where it’s at, the lesson I am in the midst of learning, and my desire to commit to fighting for a life of surrender because He. Is. Worth. It. How that plays out logistically long-term, you and I both will have to stay tuned to see how this beautiful story He is writing plays out.
