I woke up startled that morning in Rama. Aubrey walked into the room I was sleeping in and I asked her to pray for me because I’d just had a bad dream.
It started to ruin my morning, thinking of the gruesome face I saw in that dream. She was gone. Dead. And I’d killed her. I’d buried her alive and even though I wanted to save her, the person I was with would not go back with me to pull her out of the dirt. When I returned to her she stared back at me with a haunting face. She was no longer alive.
I knew that it was a bad dream, but it didn’t bother me because I was terrified. It bothered me because I knew there was meaning behind it. It took a lot of thinking on it throughout the day to try and figure out what it meant.
When I left home I knew that this trip would be life-changing. I knew that I couldn’t be the same person I was when I returned. In fact, if I returned the same person I knew I’d be ticked off. I want that change. I need that change.
There are times when I look at pictures from home, at people who are living life without me, their worlds moving on even though I’m far away and I am saddened. It saddens me not only because life goes on, but because I know that it’ll be different when I do go back.
I have moments of terror, of panic, when I realize that I won’t be the same person people knew when I left. I want to save that girl that they know. The one who isn’t walking the way she should. The girl who doesn’t recognize she was destined for more. I want to hold on to the familiar, although the unknown will undoubtedly be better. But in those moments of panic, I have a protector. I have God, who is willing to walk me through this journey and mold me into someone who no longer panics at the thought of not being the same. He will walk me through the pain of figuring out how old relationships will fare despite the changes.
I know that right now, as I walk through my day to day life with 39 other radical believers that I am burying myself. I am burying the old me alive. And God is the one holding me back from the old me. He is keeping me here, for this season, to fully kill her, as morbid as that sounds. She must no longer live in me.
I know that in seven months she will be gone. She may look at me hauntingly, but I will trust that the old has gone and the new has come. And I will walk in my destiny.
