January 18th, 2017. One of my greatest friends asked me to the be the Maid of Honor in her wedding. Now this isn’t my worst nightmare, quite frankly it’s my greatest dream! I couldn’t imagine anything better then standing next to my best friend as she says her vows to the love of her life.
Now imagine you’ve told your best friend you would love NOTHING MORE then to be her Maid of Honor. Then not even two months later you have to call her and say, “I’m sorry I can’t be in your wedding…” This may not be a big deal to all of you reading this, but to me it was devastating. I cried for weeks leading up to this moment in hopes that my tears would make it all go away. That in the end I would wake up and realize it was all just a horrible nightmare.
But it wasn’t. This was the reality I was facing and God was asking me to face it with joy and obedience. How can I do this God? How can I be joyful about this? I didn’t understand…
Let’s go back to my time in Cambodia. My squad had the great opportunity to join three other squads, that are on the field now, for a few days of worship, rest and teaching. This is where the Lord started to reveal to me this new reality.
We had a man named Gary Black come and speak. What an amazing man that seeks after the Lord each and every day. Now something he said really stuck with me, “We are striving to be Christ here on Earth and to do that we must surrender everything. Our lives. Our friends. Our family. It’s not about sacrifice but surrender of everything we’ve ever been or known.” Later that evening I felt like the Lord revealed to me what my time after the Race will look like. This plan of His would cause me to miss my friends wedding. Cue my worst nightmare. I didn’t want it to be real so I spent the next few days wrestling with the Lord. Making sure I had heard Him right, processing that this is what He had for me, and pleading with Him because I wanted to be in Tori’s wedding.
Our squad had time to debrief and rest after our time in Cambodia. This is where the Lord really put it on my heart to fully surrender, in front of my whole squad, Tori’s wedding and everything that came with that. I cried. A lot. But Jesus doesn’t just ask us to surrender, He asks us to do it joyfully because ultimately what He has for us is better.
Fast forward to March 3rd. The day I planned to phone Tori to tell her what the Lord had placed on my heart. I had been praying up to this point that the Lord would prepare her heart for the news and prepare my words to not be my own. I called her and told her about what the Lord had placed on my heart. That I would miss her wedding. What happened next brought me to tears.
“Savannah, I want you to do what the Lord has called you too. That is way more important than my wedding. I’m not upset whatsoever.”
God is so faithful. HE IS SO FAITHFUL!!! Y’all, friends like that are not easy to come by. God brought Tori into my life and here is just one of the many reasons why.
Fast forward to March 20th. The day I got the email that I had officially been accepted as a Squad Leader for Gap Year September 2018. Yep, you read that right. I will be going out on the mission field again!! God has called me into leading a Squad of 18-20 years old on a 9 month journey with Jesus. Wow. I can’t thank Jesus enough for this calling. And I’m totally stoked to see what those 10 months (including training) bring!! As you can imagine I’ll be fundraising again but that’s for later. For now, let’s celebrate that God is faithful and calls His children and invited them into a life with Him. Woooo!!!
With love, sav
ps– if God is calling you to surrender something now, He’s asking you because He has something SO much better planned. Don’t be afraid to trust Him. He will always come through!! Maybe not in the ways you think, but in ways that will make your life abundantly better
