[forewarning… this is long. So, thanks ahead of time for all of you who actually read it.]
At this point, my team and I were making our way back to Bangkok to meet up with the squad and then from there make our way to Cambodia. I had determined that when we got there, I would talk to the squad leaders about everything I had been processing and where I was at with it all. Here’s the thing about travel days with the World Race though: all kinds of craziness, especially when all 44 of us are making our way to one place from all over. So it just didn’t work out at all to talk to any of them.
We all stayed the night at the YWAM base there in Bangkok, the same place we had stayed at the beginning of the month for debrief. During the night, the Lord woke me up with the thought that I should I go check out a bookshelf that was in another part of the building, where we had stayed the first time. I was kind of startled by it, but nonetheless got up and went to the bookshelf. Cool thing: for some time previous to this and even earlier that day, I’d been talking about how I wanted to find this book called “Hinds Feet on High Places”. It’s an allegory that I was reminded of when I read “Dream Giver” with Drea and I’d been wanting to find it and read it ever since. Low and behold when I get to the bookshelf there it is smack dab in the middle of it, -“Hinds Feet on High Places” along with its sequel “Mountains of Spices”; a two for one, can’t get much better than that! So I thanked the Lord and trekked back up the stairs to lie back down (YWAM bases apparently LOVE staircases, lots and lots of staircases). This book proved to be the medium through which the Lord spoke so much to me over the month that followed.
The book follows Much Afraid’s journey to the High Places and tells how she got there with her two companions Sorrow and Suffering while following the path laid before them by the Chief Shepherd. She’s attacked multiple times by Pride, Bitterness, Resentment, Self Pity and the likes and is also led on a winding journey, during which she had to build multiple alters to the Chief Shepherd and lay down her will and her fears over and over again. Throughout the journey, the Shepherd makes promises to her after each of these alters is built and she’s learned another lesson. The main promise is that He will take her to the High Places, cause the seed of love that He planted in her heart to bloom there, heal her there, and give her a new name.
As I began to read this story, I loved how so much of it seemed to mirror and speak a lot about the journey I had been on with the Lord during the process of coming on the Race. It seemed to parallel a lot of things that had happened in my life and my relationship with the Lord. What I didn’t realize was how quickly it would come to a place where it was paralleling what was actually going on in my life.
About a week into our time in Cambodia, I had to meet up with our squad leaders to get some stuff and during that meeting I told them about my desires to go home and everything I had walked through the month before. It was a tough convo. I’ve become really close to a lot of people on this squad and especially our three squad leaders, so telling them I believed I was supposed to leave wasn’t easy. It definitely compared to telling all of my friends and family that I was being called to leave to go on the World Race. They understood though, and met me in that with a loving and caring response. They had to talk to our field support after that to let them know what was going on and that’s when everything hit the fan (in a way).
At this point, I felt like I was just supposed to stop raising support and go home whenever what I did have in my account ran out, and, based on what I had in there I kind of thought – key word here is thought – that would last a couple more months. Well, after the squad leaders talked to our field support, I got a call and during that call, a few bombs were dropped on me that were pretty unsettling. First I found out that if you feel called to go home before the end of the Race, they ask that you go home really quickly after that, as in a couple of days later, which was not exactly what I had been expecting. Also if you go home early, you buy your plane ticket. I mean, it’s kind of an abrupt feeling thing, but the idea with it is that if you feel called to go home, then you’re supposed to go home. The thing that was weird for me in that is that I hadn’t heard I was supposed to go home that weekend, nor did I have the personal finances to buy a plane ticket home from Cambodia, so I was thrown into a whirlwind of emotions, thoughts, worries, confusion and the likes.
In it, I started doubting a lot of things that I had heard from the Lord about what was happening, mainly because nothing seemed to be going the way I thought it should of. It was really one of those times though, when everything felt like it was falling a part, but even in that feeling I felt a certain kind of peace. This is a really cliché’ analogy, but it felt what I could imagine being in the eye of a hurricane could feel like. I kept being reminded that no matter what, the Lord knew what was happening and it was going to be okay.
The night after I got off the phone with field support, I was frazzled and my own thoughts and worries were so annoying to me that I decided to just read. So I picked up “Hinds Feet on High Places”, and this is when the parallels started to feel too immediately familiar. At this point in the story Much Afraid had made her way a good way up the mountain. She had already trekked through some pretty difficult things, and was feeling good about where she had made it. Then all of the sudden she and her companions come to a turn in the path that seems to be taking them all the way back down the mountain to the Valley of Loss. This is when she freaks out; she’s confused, hurt, and angry. I could relate.
At this point she’s so confused and refuses to believe that that would really be the right path to where the Shepherd was taking her; it appears to be going in the complete opposite direction. That’s when she calls out to the Shepherd and he shows up. She tells him about how she thinks this can’t possibly be the right way, when where he’d been taking her was up the mountain, not down. She rants and rants and when she’s done the Shepherd simply tells her that it is indeed the right way. He reminds her that she said she would trust him with the way and the promises. And he reminds her that she had built many alters and laid down her will and ideas of how this journey should go, saying that even if she didn’t understand she would follow him in whatever direction the path took her.
At the end of that chapter I set the book down, or rather kind of threw it down, and sort of told the Lord before going to bed, “I don’t like what you’re trying to say here. I don’t think I’m ready for what’s about to happen”. That piece of me knew at that point, that after all of this journey of getting to a place where I was willing to trust the Lord with His promises and step out in pursuing them and going home… He was now going to ask me to trust Him in the completely different direction. This is about the point when I felt like a pinball in God’s arcade game (hence the title). I felt like I was being bounced all over the place, and I was not havin’ it! The thing is, I couldn’t really change it. I had followed the Lord this far, there wasn’t really any turning back (because that’d still be “walking down the mountain”) and there wasn’t really any way to try to continue to just trek up the mountain from where I was. So I could both sit in my confusion, and continue to be stuck, or I could move forward in what I did know to be true, which was and is that the Lord is faithful and worthy to be followed.
For me the confusion was all around. I was still caught up in what I had heard about going home, but also nothing felt right about going home that weekend. I didn’t know what to do because the apparent options were either stay and continue to raise support or go home now. Continuing to raise support had seemed so far removed from what I had come to expect and left me with a lot of questions for the Lord, but when it came down to it the only thing I really knew for sure in those moments was that I was not supposed to go home that coming Saturday. During all this processing, I had another talk with our field support and was honest about still not really knowing what I should do, nor feeling a complete change of heart about going home yet. They told me that they wanted to give me a couple days to decide what to do and I’d get another call that Thursday.
After that phone conversation, I again read another chapter of “Hinds Feet on High Places.” This time Much Afraid had made her way through the Valley of Loss and was back part way up the other side of the mountain when the Shepherd called out to her and told her to meet her at a certain place. He said that there he would ask her to sacrifice all the promises he’d given her so far. Okay so at this point, I set the book down, shook my head and mentally said, “This is ridiculous.” Nonetheless I picked it back up and kept reading. In the rest of the chapter Much Afraid struggles with the idea of letting go of what she knows the Lord has told her and given her, contemplates just throwing it all away because “maybe that won’t hurt as much”, and eventually makes her way to the place the Shepherd called her to where he basically asks her if she loves the promises more than him. Promises or no promises, would she still follow him? And that’s when she lays it all down.
At this point, I knew what I needed to do. Reluctantly, I accepted this redirection from the Lord and told everyone that I would be continuing to raise support and not going home that Saturday. It was then up to the Lord how long I would be staying, because at this point I had little under a week to finish raising the rest of my support and if it didn’t come in, I’d be back to looking for a ticket home. I still felt like I was being a pinball, just bouncing around.
The day after I decided all of that, when I was still processing everything I had been reading and hearing from the Lord, a cool thing happened. One of my squad mates called me and gave me the story of Abraham and Isaac to read because God had laid it on his heart for me. Reading it reminded me of exactly what I had just read in “Hinds Feet…” and reminded me that the Lord is trustworthy, and we will see that, if we only trust him, walking forward in obedience even in times when it looks like He’s taking away the very things He gave us (as was very true for Abraham when asked to sacrifice Isaac).
In the next few days, ALL my support and more came in! It was mind blowing to see that happen. Literally, in the last 2 days I had over $2,000 donated by anonymous donors and more on top of that by friends and family. It was an incredible thing, but I’d be lying if I said it weren’t also still kind of hard in the moment. It’s a very trying thing to be thrown back and forth in that way. I was definitely ready for a definite answer as to whether I was staying or going, and I got that, which was good, but as it all settled down I realized I just felt exhausted from everything.
The beautiful thing is that the Lord is faithful even in that to be a source of rejuvenation and life. He likes making seemingly dead things come back to life, and He makes all things new. And that’s where I’ve been for this little bit since then: feeling seemingly dead but also experiencing a lot of rejuvenation while just coming to the Lord for the life He wants and is giving me.
I still don’t understand all of what this past month or so has been for me, but these are the bits that I do and I’m realizing more and more that I don’t really need to understand it all. I just need to continue forward with the Lord on this path set before me and trust Him above all else.
