I’ll leave you with these words from Nouwen’s Inner Voice of Love. Words from a meditation in his journal upon which I am reflecting almost every day.
I pray they challenge you in the way they have challenged me. Wherever your old country, or your new country, may be.
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You have an idea of what the new country looks like. Still, you are very much at home, although not truly at peace, in the old country. You know the ways of the old country, its joys and pains, its happy and sad moments. You have spent most of your days there. Even though you know that you have not found there what your heart most desires, you remain quite attached to it. It has become part of your very bones.
Now you have come to realize that you must leave it and enter the new country, where your Beloved dwells. You know that what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. That requires death of what has become so precious to you: influence, success, yes, even affection and praise.
Trust is so hard, since you have nothing to fall back on . Still, trust is what is essential. The new country is where you are called to go, and the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable.
It seems that you keep crossing and recrossing the border. For a while, you experience a real joy in the new country. But then you feel afraid and start longing again for all you left behind, so you go back to the old country. To your dismay, you discover that the old country has lost its charm. Risk a few more steps into the new country, trusting that each time you enter it, you will feel more comfortable and be able to stay longer.
–Henri Nouweni struggle with embracing the new country. i long for the safety and the comfort in the old country. it all comes down to fear of the unknown and what is in store for me in the new. the definition of fear is “to run”. i’m no longer running from the new country, but i’m going to move forward. i may be afraid sometimes, but i am no longer going to fear what will come. there is an excitement in “new”. i am SO looking forward to what He has planned!
