The wicked flee when no one pursues,
but the righteous are bold as a lion.
-Proverbs 28:1 (ESV)
In the months since training camp, I have been weak.
Weak in my flesh, weak in my spirit. If there is a place you can be weak, I was there. The weeks following camp I felt like I was soaring. I felt so alive for the first time in so long, like I had just come from a place where I truly belonged and knew myself. I was unashamed to speak and to encourage and to laugh long and hard.
Then the days began passing faster. Soon weeks were gone…and then a month. Spirits of fear, of indecision, of lethargy, of apathy, of jealousy, of rage and of insecurity began weighing on my mind.
“You’re always going to be rejected in the end.” “You are not worthy of love.” “They will forget you”.
“You are replaceable”.
Voices from the past I had long since forgotten about awoke and tortured me relentlessly for days on end. I could barely look at my best friends without a weight of despair crushing down on me. I couldn’t pull myself out.
Honestly, there wasn’t a moment when it turned around and changed in an instant. There was no flash of light, no trembling walls, no flickering lights. If I am being transparent here- there were plenty of times I cried out to God and felt unheard.
Slowly, though, the thoughts that were torturing me previously began to fuel a desire to wage war.
Wage a war against the cruel lies of the enemy. Wage a war against the sin that so intricately ensnared my mind and my heart. Wage a war against the belief that love is conditional and that people should always act the way I think they should.
I will never, ever be perfect. But my God, my God He NEVER fails. Even when I cannot seem to make a single good decision over the span of a day, He is still waiting with open arms to soothe my aching soul.
That’s the point of it all. It is not about us. It’s about God. When we convince ourselves that we are the focus, and that our emotions and feelings are the goal, we will lose ourselves to that belief. That belief only leads to self-pity and despair. Somewhere along the journey I lost sight of the unloved, the hungry, the sick and the hurting and replaced their faces and their needs with my own.
“Why me, God?” “Won’t you just show me your will, Father?” “Where are you, Lord?”
The grand, sweeping questions we ask God when we’re only thinking about ourselves are a good representation of the heart that is far from Him. Those questions revolve around me, me and me.
I continuously lost little parts of myself as I buried deeper in my defenses and my hurt.
I decided, that if I am meant to run this race, the World Race and into eternity, I’m going to have to be brave.
I want to see you be brave.
I had this idea in my head that I could just continue living life the way I always had, and then I would leave and go to these eleven countries and leave them having loved my heart out. That’s not the way it works. If I don’t take the necessary steps to love myself as God loves me, and see myself as God sees me, how can I go into the world and ask others to do the same?
I leave the United States in just under two weeks, and I have decided that I will be brave. When I’m tired: I will be brave. When I’m sick: I will be brave. When I’m hurt, angry, lonely, scared, happy, excited, willing and ready: I will be brave. God’s children are warriors, strengthened by the knowledge that their hearts beat for a purpose greater than these days that we see with our eyes now. I will not waste another moment. Life is too fleeting.
Can you feel it? The urgency bubbling up from a place deep inside, the sense that living a life focused inwardly just isn’t enough. Don’t fight it. Let yourself be carried away by it. Let God show you what a life seen through His eyes can be capable of.
Come and be brave with me.
