I’ve never been good with raw honesty. In fact, what I HAVE gotten very good at is deflecting. I give a ‘quick’, ‘safe’ answer and move on to ask the person before me, a question in return. In the past, my excuse for this action would be, “You have too much going on in your own life, I don’t want to add to it” or “we always talk about me, it is time to talk about you”. Or I will say a statement similar to this, “Well, the reason I do this, is because I usually find myself in a ‘mentoring’ type role…so I need to be that “strong” one”.
October 2013 I found myself paired up with another all girls team and together, we were placed to work with Sarah’s Covenant Home (SCH) in Ongloe, India. This would become one of the hardest, HOTTEST, suckiest, draining, exhausting, gruelling, shattering, life changing, month on the race for me. Ministry aside (read about how God ROCKED my world through the life of one VERY special young women, HERE), India was a month where God stopped me and forced me to look at myself. To look inwardly and to examine the women He was creating.
Yes, I ‘appeared’ to have it all together on the outside, but inside I was falling apart and I didn’t know why. I was on a team I loved (despite just having gone through our first team changes), the month prior (Romania with Raul) was a month in which God spoke incredible Truths into my life as we spent time with gypsies in the afternoons after our mornings were filled with constant prayer and worship (Raul, Thank YOU so very much for the Truths God used you, to speak into my life unknowingly that month!) In India, we were working in a special needs children home alongside a team that had my two best World Race buds on it. Life was great right? I didn’t need to stop and look at myself (or so I thought) and so I simply kept going with how I was. I dove into ministry and ‘called it good’.
Towards the end of the month, my team at the time thought it was time for a ‘constructive feedback’ (how to define that? Good question-still don’t know what good, constructive feedback looks like…) so we did. I remember gathering in our main room that evening after a full day of ministry, not wanting to be there at all. In fact, I hated those evenings and found them pretty useless. Yet it was in this evening, were God ‘woke me up’ and an intense journey began. It was pointed out to me that, other than a selected few on the race, I didn’t ‘allow’ other ‘in’. I was challenged to begin to open up and simply share and to also ask myself the question of, “what was stopping me from opening up?”
This threw me for a loop. I was at lost and didn’t know what to do. Thankfully, God has blessed me with some incredible friends here at home, and even through email, they were able to ‘shed light’ and speak Truth into my life from thousands of miles away. But I needed more. So, on separate occasions I pulled my two best buds aside and asked them flat out. I shared with them, the situation, how I was challenged and I asked them to be real with me right there. They were.
Through having those conversations, I learned that I too, needed to be ‘pursued’. I wish I could say that God “gave me the answers” as to just HOW that would look like. But God doesn’t ‘work’ like that. At least not in my relationship with Him. That is one of the things I love about being in a relationship with God. The way He loves ME is completely different than how He loves the person next to me. God KNOWS us, CARES for us and LOVES us each individually and yet, just as intimately. How awesome is that?
Today marks a year since I the rest of the squad in Atlanta for day one of Launch. Today also marks me being at home, for just over a month. To say this past month at home, has been easy, would be a lie. I’ve found myself time and time again, going back to old ways of, ‘keeping people out’. I’ve wrestled and I’ve cried out to God, asking Him why this is so hard.
I wish I could say that I ‘have it all together’ and ‘life is great’ but I can’t. That would be a lie. YES it HAS since gotten better, but not with out its own battles. Day by day, I have a choice. Every morning that I wake up, I have to choose whether or not I am going to ‘hide in fear’ of what lies ahead, or say, “God I don’t know what You have planned today for me, but today I choose to wake up knowing that it is in Your hands and You love me to much, to let me go. Today I choose to listen and believe, that You WILL finish the GOOD work within me and that Your plans for me, are to give me hope, prosper and a future. Today, regardless of what happens. I choose You ABBA.”
