Current struggle: being present.
Two weeks have passed since I graduated from college, and I find myself longingly looking back. I was told this would happen, I stubbornly disagreed (cause you know, I have all the answers). The beauty behind it all is that I used to hate the place I’m looking back to.
I leapt into my freshman year at Indiana University full of eager anticipation and was met instead with disillusionment & loneliness like I had never felt before. The idea of Bloomington being my home caused my stomach to twist into knots, and I cried myself to sleep for MONTHS. It was traumatizing if I’m being honest, mostly because I wasn’t used to feeling this way. I wasn’t used to crying all the time, not having friends and living alongside people who seemingly had nothing in common with me. Entering college can be that way for most freshman and though I was told this time and time again, I never truly believed it until it was no longer my reality (because again, I have all the answers).
God decided that I should stay in Bloomington the following year, to which I thought He must be out of His mind! I then realized that I must be out of MY mind for questioning His authority; so I obeyed, and PRAISE HANDS EMOJI for that one because it was the best decision I could have ever made. The Lord answered my prayers for community by leading me to the Christian Student Fellowship (CSF) campus house, a place of worship and fellowship for all students at IU to come together as a body of believers, ask the tough questions and build intentional community. Through God’s good grace this student ministry has fostered spiritual growth, introduced me to my best friends, and molded me into a confident and compassionate leader in the church. I went from hesitantly joining a small group where I knew no one, to co-leading a women’s small group my senior year. I went from knowing nothing about human trafficking to becoming a passionate advocate for the women and children trapped in slavery today. I went from holding onto my comfort zone for dear life to embracing the unknown territories that lay beyond it. My Sherwood Oaks church family, CSF family and IU family are relationships that I will cherish forever and these are the very communities that I am “longingly looking back” on today.
It’s difficult not being plugged in to communities like this at home, though I know that God has opportunities for me to get plugged in here; I’m praying that He reveals these to me and that my focus would be on what He wants for me now, NOT on what He has blessed me with in the past and NOT on what He has planned for me in the future.
Which brings me to the flip side of my present struggle (pun intended).
A month or two before I graduated, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I was looking forward to the summer. To devoting all of my time to raising support for the World Race, to spending time with friends & family from home and preparing for the journey ahead! Well, here we are. The ‘future’ has become the present and now I’m not only looking back, but looking forward (again)! Good grief, how the Lord puts up with me I’ll never know.
I’m actually reading through the book of Acts right now, recounting the history of the first-century church and Jesus’ disciples living out the Great Commission! There are some incredible testimonies in this book, and perhaps I’ll write another blog about what God is teaching me through it; one thing He is teaching me currently though is that the opportunity to live out my faith is not reserved solely for the Race. “From one man he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’” (Acts 17:26-28). Listen to this: In past history, God created man to inhabit the earth with a future plan for salvation and eternal life. In Him, we live and move and have our being. Live. Move. Have. Present tense.
You see, I’m allowing the anticipation of living as Peter and Paul lived in other nations deter me from embracing the opportunity to make disciples of this nation, today! I’m flirting with impatience, and turning a blind eye to forbearance. I really need to stop that, it’s such a nasty habit.
Here’s the thing, friends. There is nothing wrong with finding pleasure in the past or feeling excited about the future, at all. It’s just a matter of the heart. As for me, I like to glamorize the past and romanticize the future when the present is all I’ll ever live in, but moments are fleeting and opportunities are disguised as time so I’m praying for a shift in focus; because when ministry means now, I don’t want to throw away my shot.*
I don’t want to avoid conversation with the cashier who had a bad day because I’m preoccupied with a fundraiser I have to set up for. I don’t want to listen to a friend talk about her struggling faith only to have the thought of thank you letters I forgot to write flood my mind. I don’t want to focus my attention so intently on August that I miss out on June and July. I want to be present in each moment, allowing the Spirit to lead me in each conversation, each act of love, and each silent prayer.
I may not have all the answers, but God does. & I’d much rather live in His timing than my own; so please consider partnering with me in prayer as I take this journey with the Lord! It’s gonna be rad.
Isaiah 12:1-6
*Disclaimer: I’m not trying to be poetic or make some sort of Hamilton reference here; just wanted to share with you what God has placed on my heart – I am open to any and all Hamilton references though 😉
