Going into Zim, I was wholly renewed by the revelation God had worked within me at the end of Nepal. I was so excited to enter a new continent and a new country with a new soul and a new joy found in the Lord.
When we landed in Zimbabwe, filled with energy and a desperate desire to become closer to the Lord, I promised myself I would wake up early every morning to spend time with Him, to read my Bible, pray and journal alongside Him every single day. That I would wake up and immediately seek Him out and place Him first.
Those of you who know me well, know well and good that I am most definitely NOT a morning person. I have been caught sleeping until noon on several occasions, I often regret that my mother had such trouble waking me up during my highschool years, and on the weekends if I was up before 10:00 AM then the world was ending. So this was a daunting challenge for me.
Since our whole team had to meet up for devotionals in the morning, waking up early for me meant I had to wake up at 6:00 AM in order to have enough and a meaningful quiet time alone with the Lord. So I set my alarm for six, wholly and fully expecting to wake up quite a bit later than the time I’d set. In Nepal I’d kept setting my alarm early, then sleeping through it and waking up later to the fully justified annoyed faces of my teammates who’d woken up and had to search for the source of the alarm simply to find it right beside my sleeping, snoring nose.
So yeah, I wasn’t exactly expecting to wake up at six on the first try. And yet, the next morning I woke up at the first ring, and was immediately awake. (Man I bet my mom would’ve really liked for that to happen my junior year!) I quickly turned it off and basked in the light of the sunrise filtering through the little window in our “cozy” apartment bedroom I shared with the rest of the team.
I nearly leapt off the floor in my excitement to find I had awoken at the correct time. I quickly washed my face and brushed my teeth, then quietly grabbed my Bible, journal, phone and pens and made my way about seven steps to the main room and sat down at the table. I plugged my earbuds in, set my phone to play my Christian music playlist at low volume, picked up my black pens, and opened to psalms. I resolved to read at least one a day, as well as another chapter somewhere, though where I wasn’t sure yet. After reading and marking my psalm (I’d begun in Nepal, but read them sporadically and with little interest or analysis), I wondered where to start my Bible reading journey. After a bit, I decided you couldn’t go wrong with the words of Jesus, so I decided to begin very simply in the book of Matthew. Turned out I got so into it, I’d finished 5 chapters before realizing I maybe should’ve simply made the goal of reading a chapter a day. But I shrugged it off, realizing that in my newfound excitement for every discovery and truth the Bible had in store for me, I’d never have stuck to simply one chapter a day.
Besides, I read quickly.
Afterward, I cracked open my new journal from Nepal, fresh and clean with a single entry, just like my new life, and picked up my pen to begin to write, when I hesitated. I remember trying to get into journaling several times in my past, but every time the habit had failed to take. Trying to journal during my middle and early high school years had only resulted in the random, unplanned and haphazard writings of a tiny angsty teenager. And when I’d begun after the summer of my junior year spurred on by an especially amazing and inspiring Christian summer camp experience, I’d so focused on keeping the format of my journaling “correct” and tidy, I’d quickly and sadly lost interest and motivation.
So I hesitated. I wondered. I doubted. But ultimately? I threw tidiness, timidity, and the false idea of “correct” journalling into the wind, said “Hey, you know what, screw it,” put my pen down the paper and just wrote whatever the heck came to my mind I wanted to talk to God about and darned the consequences and fears of “failing” to journal.
Best. Decision. Ever.
(If there’s one thing I should stress that I’ve learned completely and utterly since I’ve started really truly journalling, it’s that there is absolutely no correct journal. Do it your way, and that IS that correct way. Please please please don’t think you can do it wrong. In fact, it can even change!
Future-Kendall would like to tell her readers that her first journal, the one mentioned in this blog, was lined and usually denoted by a date at the top of every entry. Halfway through the journal, I’d begun to add extra entries with simple titles because I’d needed to process through my writing. Then I’d begun painting and drawing in it, and by the end it looked completely different than the first half of the journal. And my second journal is blank, no lines at all! I’ve cut out magazine clippings for pictures and snappy titles, and begun calligraphing names and journal entries and Bible verses simply because I wanted to!
So I apologize for the tangent, but I honest really wished some had made this clear to me when I first tried journaling, so I couldn’t just leave it be. Go, journal however you feel like it, feel free to be clumsy and not know what the heck you’re doing when you start because I certainly didn’t. Just go for it!
Now, back to the main storyline!)
And thus started a new routine. Every morning I’d wake up at six, brush my teeth and wash my face, and spend an hour with the Lord. And I really can’t explain how incredibly happy it made me that the Lord had made me able to spend time with Him. Literally, it literally couldn’t have been me. I never could have woken up so early in the morning without His help. My teammates even commented on the fact that I was consistently waking up early every morning, how different I was from Nepal, how much happier and more fulfilled I seemed, and how it physically couldn’t have happened without the Lord’s help. They were so happy for me. I was so happy for me.
However, a lot of crazy happened in Zim, so it wasn’t unexpected when I failed to wake up some mornings to read my Bible. It really sucked the first time it happened though, because it was such a letdown. It felt like I’d failed, big time, again.
But the very next morning I got up, washed my face and brushed my teeth, and spent an hour with the Lord. A couple morning later, I didn’t wake up in time. The next morning, I did.
And that? That was the best part of Zimbabwe. Every day was a new dawn, a literal new chance to spend time with the Lord. Even if I’d failed the morning previously, that new dawn was a completely new slate. There was no record of how many mornings I’d succeeded and how many I’d failed to worry or stress about. I was made new in the Lord every single morning.
Every new dawn was a new me, and a new day to spend with Him. This is what the Lord taught me in Zim.
