January 9th, 2018: Last Night of Project Search Light (PSL)
“So I was baptized tonight. 🙂
Words can’t even describe how I felt… let me attempt to explain all the feels from PSL that led up to me deciding to be washed by the water again!
So coming home was rough. I struggled hardcore and instead of pressing into my wonderful, loving Father to help me through, I avoided Him. I didn’t cry out for help or guidance. My daily communion with Him/my prayer life pretty much ceased to exist. All year I worked on Him being the center of my life and the start of my day and within 72 hours of being home, it was gone. Out of my life with the snap of my fingers, poof, gone. I felt like a hypocrite walking around telling people how amazing my year was and how close I grew to the Lord when I wasn’t even talking to Him anymore. I wasn’t processing the Race, I wasn’t coping well with being home, and I didn’t grieve the end of the Race. The World Race is over, officially tonight at 10pm… however, I thought that I prepared myself to begin the grieving but I hadn’t. Not in the slightest.
The more time that went by, the easier it was not to process and to justify in my brain that, PSL is where I’ll process all the things, I’ll be back in the community I’ve had all year, with my S Squad fam bam, in a safe place, and I’ll get back on track with Jesus and everything will be great again!
Dang, what a terribly bad mindset/and an awful choice that was! But, not dwelling on it, the past is the past and all you can do is learn from it and keep pressing on ahead! Anyway… some awesome things happened at home, but a part of me was missing and I didn’t know what it was.
To make matters worse, I received an email from my squad mentor about an opportunity I now have as a World Race Alumni (dang that’s still weird to say,) that I never even considered. She said that when praying about this opportunity specific people were given to her. Mine being one of them. At her house the first night of PSL I had told her how much that email messed me up because I knew if God gave her my name, then it was just another thing to add to the list of things I needed to process/talk to the Lord about. Which already felt like an overwhelmingly large list… Anyway, I said, Beka, you know this non-profit is like my focus right now and if you think that this thing will help me with it, then I’ll consider it, but that would be the only reason. She said, Meg, that’s the exact reason why God gave me your name… so cool but also kind of scary to think that “my plans..” (more reflections on that definition later) may be completely altered! So I was all kinds of crazy in the head!!
Going back to what had been missing in my life, I pretty much realized within the first 24 hours of PSL what was missing… INTIMACY WITH MY PAPA IN HEAVEN. It’s ALL about intimacy with Him, it’s literally what everything stems from! If you don’t have intimacy, you don’t have anything! Also, I kept hearing a reoccurring theme, how I am a child of God and a daughter of the King! These things are my identity that I stepped into on the Race for pretty much the first time. However, that identity vanished when I got home. I wasn’t walking in the authority, confidence, bravery, not worrying, and boldness that comes with that identity. I was lost…
Last night at worship, a girl from another squad came up to tell me that God singled me out of the entire room (200ish people) just to remind me that He loves me, I am chosen, and to be reminded of childhood and remember to be a child with Him as my Father. We sang songs about our identity as children, were reminded of our identity in most of our sessions, and even sang about it with every worship session! I believed it on the Race; however, secretly, never accepted it completely!
Fast forward to tonight, worship had me feeling all kinds of feels about mourning the Race and just trying to comprehend how much God truly loves me and how He sees me and calls me His daughter! I lost it completely, overwhelmed with His love for me and something in my inner being literally shifted, turned, like a key in a car’s ignition! The weight of that change caused me to continue to weep and get on the ground. I felt free, completely free, broken of any chains of doubt over who I was for the first time ever! It was huge! I began journaling about it! I was pumped, I was crying, I was laughing, I couldn’t even sing I was so overcome by His precious Holy Spirit!
Fast forward to the end of the night… They had prayer and anointing available and an opportunity for people to be baptized. The husband and wife pastoral couple who were doing the baptisms said that if you even questioned that you should be baptized then do it, without a doubt! It doesn’t matter if you were baptized as a kid or baptized on the Race. Acts 2 calls us to be baptized in the Spirit so who wants it? Something automatically fought that call to be baptized. I instantly started worrying about what other people would think, my squad knew my story that I had already been baptized twice… what would they think?! It was only a moment that that fear and doubt crept in before I knew, I had to do it. The Holy Spirit was totally prompting me to recommit once again to My Papa in Heaven now that I had truly, 100% owned, accepted, and understood my identity!
When I got up and explained to Jessi why I was feeling like I needed to get baptized again, she said, “ I feel like we have to do something different with you (they had just been pouring water on people’s heads as they stood and received it.) I said okay, and she said, we’re going to pour both water bottles down, like a fountain and you’re going to walk through them! She asked me if I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and only wanted Him forever and I said yes and walked through that water!
I can’t even put into words how it felt other than liberating! Even more so than my baptism 7 1/2 years ago in a pond in college! I was overwhelmed by love and felt so full. I never want to forget or let go of that feeling! Praise be to Jesus, all Glory to my precious Papa, the King of all, and thanks to the Holy Spirit for leading me to say yes!! Amen, amen, amen!”
