Disclaimer: This blog is long. It’s also a little heavy. Like, world racer backpack can’t-get-through-the-weigh-in heavy-and-just-have-to-drop-a-few-things-here-and-there-to-make-weight. It’s also not anywhere near the length of recommended blogs for fundraising, because they say people lose interest and we need to make it short and sweet.
Well, I’ve never really been conventional.
My time with Jesus last night went a little something like this. I’m sitting at Jesus’ feet and I’m asking God what’s up. Really, just like that. I’m sitting there like a little kid with all my junk in my hands like here Jesus, could you take this for me? I’m feeling removed from the scene and a little out of place and telling Him that really Jesus, I don’t know that I’m cut out for this Kingdom work thing. Because really I mess up a lot and I have a lot to straighten out in me. That it’s really hard for me and I’m not the cookie cutter missionary and I get these randomly intense urges to drag my broken backpack out of this school and onto a red-eye back to the City of Queens, buy a pair of pumps and skinnies and hit the town to feel like an actual girl despite my stained flip-flop feet and oversized tie-dye attire I’ve grown accustomed to. See, there it is again, the you’re-so-not-cut-out-for-this lie being spoken over me.
Fast forward to two whole months since my last journal entry. Through Haiti and Honduras and villages and towns and men and women who have reached inside of me and brought out little pieces of God I had never seen in myself. This blog title would’ve been titled with some sort of cliché alliteration, like Life in Limbo or something, all the while feeling really sorry for myself that I have to do this community thing; that I’ve given up what seemed like great days and nights and status quos back home. Like a toddler in the corner pouting over what I thought should be mine was unrightfully taken from me.
All the while I’m waking up in the mornings with a simple reading, a prayer for peace and wisdom and a heart for God’s people, and something starts to happen. I begin to really grasp what I’m saying. I’m starting to believe that God is so much more than what I’ve made Him. He’s not this mystical fog atop some mountain that seems ominous and unreachable. This isn’t the Hobbit. God’s not watching from afar with a distant eye waiting to see when I mess up and tally my sins out on his mountaintop with his big finger. God’s not even what the American church has made Him out to be. He’s not a Sunday morning feel-good or a last resort. The problem is we start to see life as us against all these obstacles. Against school, our parents, our bosses, our mortgages, against the church so they don’t know what we really do outside the four walls. If we could just get that promotion, things would be better, or if I could just get that relationship thing to work out, things would fall into place. All the while we make little compromises on how to get there. And we let ourselves make bad decisions that turn into bad habits, and those bad habits turn into life. Because let’s face it. We aren’t our intentions. We aren’t what we set out to do, and we aren’t our “I’m going to’s”, because everyone says they’re going to do a lot of things, but in the end that just doesn’t make it reality.
So I’m starting to understand that I couldn’t get out of the situations I was in, those places I didn’t actually want to be and those people I didn’t actually want to see, because I was trying to. I was trying to renegotiate my relationship with God every time I messed up, making these “I’m going to be there on Sundays and it’ll fix things” promises. And I’m quite sure it can’t just be me doing this. There’s got to be others out there making guilt-ridden compromises and crossing their hearts to do a hundred times better. Then someone steps in and calls us a hypocrite and we start to believe them because we say we’re Christians but we don’t really get it and don’t know how to stop being these people we wake up to, so a lot of us give up. We say we’d rather not make promises and not catch slack and not be judged, because we can just never seem to stick to our I’m-sorry-God’s at the altar.
So, here I’ve started to see. Jesus doesn’t come to scare us into submission. God actually wants to be our friend. Wait, before you hit the little X in the top right corner and laugh at another cliché “I’m finding God on the World Race” blog, just hear me out.
God knew what you were going to do before you ever did it. He saw you sitting and reading this blog wherever you may be, long before you ever did it. And He knew whether it would pull your heart strings or not. Maybe you’ll think about these mini revelations all night and they’ll blow your mind like they did mine, or maybe you’ll think “that’s sweet” with a misty eyed momentary thought and tab back over to Facebook and not really remember anything I say. Either way, I’m just telling you what God’s giving me to say.
God’s not an idiot. God created us. Like, He gets it. He ultimately knows that to win my heart, He’s got to show me He loves me. He knows that to get Lauren to open up, you’ve got to show me where I’m wrong while giving me a passion to do the right thing. He knows that He can’t attack me or condemn me because that doesn’t work with me, but show me grace and give me a glimpse inside what He sees in me. Because He knows that once you get me on board with something, I’ll stop at nothing to make sure it’s done. He’s the ultimate business man with the ultimate business proposal, and it’s the business of love. He gives me exactly what I need while offering complete freedom, and it costs me nothing. And that’s exactly what He did when He gave His son for us. God ultimately knows what makes me sit a little straighter and stay up a little longer and ride with the music up a little louder is when I feel a safe and courageous love that is intended exactly for me and I never have to question it. He knows that when I feel love I’m willing to do I’m willing to do anything for whom I love and for who loves me. He knows it takes an ice pick and a lot of clock punching to get there but He’s okay with that, because He keeps working and waiting. My Creator knew that true change only comes through a relationship that I can feel and trust in. I have to have all of it, not just parts and pieces because I cannot understand a halfway love. Just as relationships in the past had the power to bring us to life or wound and scar our souls; God’s passionate pursuit of me holds the deepest level of change in my personality.
Of course He knew.
God’s got something better in store for this toddler. He’s going to take that raggedy toy I think I love so much and replace it with something greater, brighter, more beautiful than I deserved when I was standing in the corner crying over my spilt milk. The miracle is right around the corner, and it’s about to break through.
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