Have you ever had a song live inside your heart? You wake up and the lyrics are in your head as you shower mindlessly trying to wake the rest of your body. You hum it in the office or the parking lot when no one else is around. You belt it out in your car when you think no one is watching.
God put a new song in my heart this weekend. Due to political unrest and potential dangers AIM has switched us from Madagascar to Namibia. I was really heartbroken. Madagascar held a special place in my heart because of the language they speak and the culture they live out. I was so excited to use my French for the Lord. But he gives and takes away. Due to the fact that Haiti is in a much more desperate position we have been taken off Jamaica as well, and are being sent there instead. I am so grateful – is what I kept telling myself.
Despite human disappointment, I told myself I trusted. That when I gave something up to God that he would always replace it with something better. That respecting and loving my teammates and anyone that I encounter on this Race was going to change me regardless. Have you ever tried to convince yourself of something, when you just weren’t ready to feel it in your heart?
I went to church yesterday, on the promise I was going to let my disappointment all go. Let my worship be my oasis. Funny enough, the last two sermons have been about races. About running the right race, and about running steadfast. But despite the sermons that seemed to fit so well into the box that is becoming my world, God put a new song on my heart.
We’ve sang it a million times, we never paid attention to it before, we couldn’t recall the words that rolled off our tongues and out through our lips moments afterwards. But in the right moment the Holy Spirit grabs on to those words, and sews them over the broken spot on our hearts, to wear proudly like a patch on a Girl Scout vest, a constant reminder of our growth.
” Let the king of my heart, be the mountain where I run”
Have you ever been on a mountain? Have you ever exhausted your breath climbing to the top of a mountain, only to lose your breath at the top of it?
In the moment where you first stand at the top of a mountain looking down you can’t help but experience the fullness of life that surrounds you and the imminent fear of death that lies below you. We go to the tops mountains with the echo’s of our lonely thoughts, to get away from everything, and to realize how not alone we are. To feel both larger than life, and utterly insignificant. Some of the best conversations I’ve had with God, were while driving through the mountains, staring down at awesome beauty over a deadly precipice, and being in wonder of how it was possible to experience both fear and la joie de vivre so fully at the same time. I know people who will live anywhere in the world as long as they are on a mountain.
I am a christian today because God both sent me to, and found me on a mountain.
I am not the first to seek the mountain, many other’s before me have gone to this unique place, and I will not be the last. Mountains are steadfast, unmovable, challenging, rocky, filled with unknown dangers, and refreshing streams.
” Let the king of my heart, be the mountain where I run”
The mountain where I run, is not Madagascar. It is not Haiti or Jamaica, Albania, Serbia, Laos, or any other place I go. The mountain where I run, is the call on my heart at any given moment and the whisper of spirit in my ear as he seeks me and asks of me to follow whatever path he has set before me. The mountain where I run, is asking people for fundraising money, choking back tears as I say goodbye to students, letting go of things I loved, and making room to love where I never thought I could. The mountain where I run is wherever the Lord is leading me at any given moment.
I am blessed to know THE mountain. I know that is is full of unexpected streams that overflow with love, the music of the life that lives in the wild that is there. The helping hands that find you when you stumble on a mountain path. It is both unknown and unveiled with each trusting step we take.
My perspective of the World Race is going so much over the next 12 months. But for today, I rejoice in the song that is now in my heart.
“Let the king of my heart, be the mountain where I run.”
