Tag: Faith

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Get in the river

FlyFishingTanalianYou can fish from the shore, or you can throw on a pair of waders and follow Jesus into the river. This is what Alaska is teaching me.

Okay, let me back up…

Maybe the cold has frozen the frontal cortex of my brain, but I’ve taken to spending my Saturday mornings standing in frigid rivers with a tiny pole, tempting Pike with sharp teeth to come near me. In other words… I spend my Saturday mornings fly fishing with my boys.

Full disclosure:

1) I know Alaska has frozen a chunk of my brain. I haven’t seen weather warmer than 40 degrees in weeks.

2) I’m a terrible fly fisherman. (Fly fisher? Fly fisherwoman? See, I don’t even know the correct term. Maybe that’s why I haven’t caught anything yet…)

3) Jesus continues to prove that He’s the only One who could ever tempt me to stand in an Alaskan river on my “day off”.

Due to the fact that I can’t talk or sing while fishing (lest I scare away my prey) I’ve spent a good amount of time lately considering the fact that Jesus walked into our proverbial river by coming down to earth. In fact, He came to us and then He called us to follow in His example.

Jesus walked out of his heavenly perfection and He entered in to our lives; it’s in His very name. Emmanuel—God with us.

In this season of living with my students, teaching and learning with them during the day, and hanging out with them at night, I’m learning what His call to “enter in” with Him to peoples’ lives looks like in a new way.

Consider with me the commands of Christ in the New Testament:

“And Jesus came and said to His disciples, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:16-20)

As I read this, I can almost hear Jesus saying, “Hey! Kacy. I came to you, for you. Now go and be with others. Tell them who I am, and when you can’t seem to remember who I am, simply remember that I am always with you. You need only ask and I will show myself because I’m Emmanuel– God with you; God within you.”

We see two of the other most important commandments of Christ later in the Gospel of Mark:

“One of the scribes came up and heard the Sadducees disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus had answered them well before, asked Him, ‘Which commandment is the most important of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’” (12:28-31)

Love your neighbor as yourself. Woof; the weight of that calling is never lost on me. After all, this is the call—the one to enter in to the brokenness and pain of those around us and point them to Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t seem to be talking about “dipping your toe in the proverbial water while your other foot is comfortably planted on the ground” here. He isn’t referring to the kind of “entering in” where you see a struggle, recognize the pain and mess, and offer a Bible verse or applicable “Christian” platitude where you see fit, then leave, hoping that things will get better for that person.

No.

He’s talkin’ about slapping on your waders (even if they make you look like an idiot) and walking into the river of another’s sorrows beside them.

You might walk in and find yourself knee deep in the mud of life, which is often difficult to navigate. You might find yourself feeling like you’re drowning in the other person’s pain at times. The waters of their sorrow, pain, and fear will be cold, dark, and incredibly uncomfortable. But God is continuously reminding me that we have to be experience the rivers of other’s sorrow, in one way or another, to effectively love them as we love as ourselves. We have to be in it with them—truly in it. No matter what “it” is…

I don’t know about you, but I’m one broken, self-absorbed human being. I’m overly consumed by my own heart at times, and as I look at those moments filled with my own humanity I recognize that I’m being called to be just as concerned about the hearts of those around me.

But how do we do this? How do we enter in to the river of sorrows with another when we feel like we’re drowning in our own?

We love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That may sound trite, but I don’t mean it to.

Think about it: What does it look like to love someone that much? You long to be near them. You want to be in their presence, to hear their stories and know everything about who they are, where they’ve been, and where they’re going.

In short, if we are going to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength we have to be obsessed with His story. We have to be constantly looking to the Gospel to see who Jesus is, where He has come from, and where He is going. Our God came down as flesh—a tangible example of what it looks like to love the Lord through faith, obedience, and action (and how to love His people in the same way).

We have to be in the Gospel.

It seems so obvious, and yet in day-to-day ministry and life it’s so easy to stop looking to Jesus and simply become absorbed by the humanity and brokenness that surrounds us, or even the humanity represented within scripture.

I don’t believe that we ever intentionally take our eyes off Jesus.

For me, taking my eyes off of the Gospel usually begins innocently enough—I decide to spend time elsewhere in my Bible. For months, I was camped in the Psalms and the Pentateuch (and trust me, this is not a rag against the Psalms or the Old Testament—I LOVE both.) but slowly, ohhhh sooo slowly, I stopped looking at who Jesus was and what He has done for me.

I didn’t realize that I wasn’t looking at Him until I slammed into a wall of exhaustion a few weeks ago. Physically, I felt fine. Emotionally, I’d been better, but I knew that wasn’t my issue. I was spiritually exhausted from a lack of the Gospel in my life. And when my alarm would wake me every morning, I would lay in bed and cry at the thought of having to get up and engage with my students.

I can’t. I can’t do it, Lord. I’m too tired. I can’t enter in to the river of sorrows today. I just want to lay under this electric blanket and pretend that I’m not in Alaska and that life is not hard.

As I bemoaned this fact to a friend on the phone, she asked the question that she asks me so often: “Who are you seeing Jesus as right now?”

Jesus… Huh… I don’t think I’m seeing Jesus period… In fact, I haven’t seen much of Him in my quiet times or our lessons in the Old Testament this week. I thought out loud.

“That’s probably the problem…”

And I knew she was right.

We are to look at Him at all times; If we don’t, loving people and entering in to their lives is impossible. After all, Jesus is the only one who can save us. He is the King of the universe—the only god who has ever come to humbly die for His people and raise Himself to fulfill scripture.

He is the only one who can teach us what it means to “enter in” to the lives of the people we love.

We can’t take our eyes off of Him.

I recognize more everyday that I am not Emmanuel. No matter how hard I try to be a savior, I am not God for anybody. (And trust me, you would not want me to be your savior. I’m a mess. I cry too much and I doubt even more than I cry– a scary thought for those of you who know me… I let my fears control me, consume me, and ruin things far too often. I get angry at pain and injustice, and hell hath no fury like an angry Mexican woman…) 

So, I’m not God to this world. But by His Grace, I am of Him, in the world and so are you.

As believers, we’ve been called to show the world who God is and what He’s about. But that requires looking at Him and following His example of walking into the river of sorrows.

There are plenty of times in scripture where God promises to do amazing things once His people have gotten in the water.

What do you think Christ could do with you and those whom you love if you were willing to get in the river of sorrows with Him?

~

And the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the eyes of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you as I was with Moses. Tell the priests who carry the ark of the covenant: ‘When you reach the edge of the Jordan’s waters, go and stand in the river.’ ‘And as soon as the priests who carry the ark of the Lord—the Lord of all the earth— set foot in the Jordan, its waters flowing downstream will be cut off and stand up in a heap, so that the entire tribe of Israel might pass through on dry ground.

(Joshua 3:7-8, 13, 17)

 

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To fly by faith and not by sight…

What does it look like to fly on faith, and faith alone?

That’s easy. Anytime you fly as a passenger in a plane, you’re flying solely on faith– Faith that the stranger at the controls isn’t an absolute idiot; faith that the plane had been properly inspected and is mechanically sound for flight. More than likely, as a regular person boarding a plane, you aren’t sure of either of those things. You’re hopeful… But you’re not one hundred percent sure.

Flying is all about faith, really.

You see, there are two different types of flying—VFR, where you operate by Visual Flight Rules and can see where you’re going, and IFR, where you are operating under Instrument Flight Rules. In layman’s terms—when you’re flying IFR, you can’t see where you’re going all the time. You have to rely on your instruments: your altimeter, GPS, compass, etc.

When you fly VFR, you’re not flying through dense cloud cover, excessive fog, or blinding snow or rain. You know and can see your surroundings. For many experienced pilots, flying VFR is a cake walk. (The key word there is experienced; the thought of flying as pilot in command period still makes my inexperienced pilot stomach flip a bit… But I digress.)

Lake Clark Pass
Lake Clark Pass in all it’s VFR, summer glory.

Last summer when I visited Port Alsworth, the VFR flight conditions couldn’t have been better (even though I didn’t know it at the time). As we flew over the wetlands outside of Anchorage on my first ever approach to Port Alsworth, the weather was perfect and clear. So clear, in fact, that I could see brown bears running awkwardly along the streams below us, chasing their salmon dinners. The glaciers we buzzed by in Lake Clark Pass were a crisp turquoise, reflecting the bright blue sky above and the teal hue of Lake Clark below. Oh, it was a sight to behold… A true VFR miracle for a first time bush plane passenger.

Flying into Port Alsworth this September, was a bit of a different story.

Alaska greeted me on September 15th with a slush/rain storm that made flight in a tiny two-seater airplane seem a bit more difficult. As I sat in the Lake and Pen Air office at Merrill Field Airport that morning, I stared out at the windy conditions and rapidly changing precipitation. I half-way expected my bush flight to be delayed, if not cancelled entirely. After all, even the giant Alaska Airlines plane that carried me to Anchorage had hit so much turbulence the night before that it seemed like we were going to fall out of the sky.

But sure enough, at a little after ten o’clock, my wild child of a pilot came bursting into the LPA office, announcing that I was the lucky winner of a one-way flight “home” with him to Port Alsworth.

IMG_0226
This guy… He is just one of my faves.

As we loaded my bags into the tiny plane, word came over a radio that a plane had just crashed in Iliamna—just 20 miles from our destination. Eeesh… not exactly reassuring… I thought as I grabbed Lyle’s hand and he pulled me up into our plane. I made some comment about bush pilots not being deterred by much, to which he simply laughed and told me that this flight was going to be an easy one.

We taxiied down to the end of our runway and I watched as my pilot punched buttons, radioed people I couldn’t quite hear, and then hit the throttle. Before I knew it, we were hauling down the runway, and then lifting into the headwind and the clouds above us.

FlyingIFR
My view (or lack there of) leaving Anchorage.

My view of Anchorage quickly disappeared. Convinced that I wasn’t going to see much for a while, I slipped my headphones inside of my noise proof earmuffs, turned on my favorite playlist, and grabbed my new leather bound journal from my bag between my feet. In a daze created by the combination of sleep deprivation, adrenaline, and raw change, I opened to the first page, and wrote:

“As I sit in this plane and watch water droplets from the melting snow roll past my co-pilot window, I am amazed with who You are, God.

It amazes me that I’m in Alaska—in this plane. It amazes me that this little metal box is somehow flying through the sky… It amazes me that my pilot knows where we’re going because the snow/fog/cloud mix is so thick that I can’t see anything around us. My memory knows what this mountain pass looks like from last summer, and yet this trip is so different. There are no mountains or glaciers to ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhhh’ at; I can’t see anything running in the wetlands below. There is just here, and just now; just You and me (and this really funny guy named Lyle).

I don’t know where I’m going, God. (Literally, and figuratively.) I can’t see what’s happening around me. I don’t know what any of these buttons, lights, or levers in this plane do. But I know that You are God, and that You are Good. Oh, and that You are somehow holding us up, as if this plane was sitting in your hands… And if that’s the case, I love that you are keeping things interesting with this insane turbulence; I love that you always shake things up.”

When I wrote that, I didn’t understand that Lyle was flying IFR—by his instruments and not his eyes.

I didn’t understand the difference between IFR and VFR, even though I too was operating within my own type of IFR journey. After all, I knew that God was calling me to Alaska even though I couldn’t see why; I’d known that with every fiber of my being since that weird moment in church on Super Bowl Sunday.

I had spent the last seven months fine tuning my “instruments” through time with Jesus, setting up a “flight plan”, and learning who I was going to be on the journey with. I had been praying and crying and learning more and more what I looked like to walk by faith and not by sight.

I had plenty of people tell me (in not-so-many words) that I was a moron for leaving the life that I loved to follow Jesus to a tiny village I hardly knew. There were questions raised about practical things like “Do you really think that God is going to provide that outrageous amount of money?” regarding the raising of my own salary. Oh yeah, not to mention the obvious: “Why on earth would you go there when Jesus has so clearly been working through you in Denver? If God is ‘so good’ then why can’t He use you in a less dangerous place…?”

The questions were legitimate, and my answers hinging on faith often felt as if they weren’t. 

There were days (so many freaking days) when I doubted that God was Good—that He would provide… that He had a plan. Yet, even on the days when I doubted and I couldn’t see, I just tried to cling to Jesus and keep moving forward in faith. (Side note shout out to my roommates who laid in bed with me while I bawled on those nights and drug me back to Jesus in prayer, whether I wanted it or not. Y’all are the epitome of the church and the real MVPs.)

Yet because He is True to His callings and True to His promises, He provided in abundance financially, spiritually, and emotionally; even as I write this, looking out at the planes landing next to my house in Alaska, all I can do is laugh at how Good He really is.

He will never leave me, nor forsake me. (No matter how many times He has to reassure me of this.) He promises to be the Light before me, even when I can’t see more than a few feet in front of my face.

He has been my most reliable “instrument” as I have learned to fly out of my comfort zone with Him. His grace, His Love, His mercy; they are unfailing.

Even though it has been terrifying to blindly fly away from everything that I love, I have been unexplainably blessed by experiencing more of Him through it all.

That sounds cheesy; I know. But around these parts, it is so true. Because at the end of the day, when Bible class is over, our extra TLC programs and classes have been taught, the dishes are washed, and my girls are in bed, I sit in my house alone. Yet somehow I am not alone; I am with Him—experiencing more of His love in the silence and the darkness than I ever thought possible… Which is an answer to the exact prayer from Ephesians 3:14-20 that so many prayed over me as I left Denver…

“For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

It is terrifying to fly thousands of feet in the air, suspended by nothing but the faith that instruments will carry you on to your destination, and yet we do it all the time.

It is terrifying to be here alone sometimes, but by faith I maintain that I am not alone because I am with Jesus, my sweet Abba, and His Spirit.

And that faith? The renewed and deeper faith that kicks in when you are flying on faith in Christ alone? I can’t explain it. I don’t know how the heck God builds faith with faith. (It’s a pretty screwy system if you ask me.)

But what I do know is that flying by faith alone most beautiful, addicting feeling in the world and there is no place I’d rather be than here, in His Love. 

Where is He calling you to follow Him today? Will you choose to fly with Him, even if you can’t see what’s in front of you?

(Spoiler alert: you won’t regret it.)

Stinson

“He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are not away from the Lord, for we walk by faith and not by sight.”

(2 Corinthians 5:5-7)

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Invited in

Tea

There’s something about being invited into the home of a person you hardly know for a warm cup of tea (and toast with nutella—yum!) when it’s grey and blustery out that warms the soul in a way few other things can.

That feeling of a mug warming your frost-singed hands is one that says, “You are welcome here. You are loved.”

That is what Port Alsworth has done for me in my first few weeks in Alaska.

Families and friends have welcomed me into their homes for dinner and tea—even though it’s the end of the month and everyone’s groceries are a bit scarce. Hospitality is so important here that no one has batted an eye at welcoming me in and sharing the little they have left. (Guys, these families in this village… they trust Jesus to provide in a way that has warmed my heart while simultaneously melting my brain. Their faith is ah-mazing.)

As I’ve settled in to my new home, I’ve wrestled with feelings of homesickness in the strangest of ways. I’m not homesick for the busy-ness of Denver or for Mexican food yet (although I could really go for Fuzzy’s Tacos, now that I mention it…) No, instead I’ve been homesick for the people whose hearts I call home and the way my friends in Denver filled the Yarrow House as a family would.

My stubbornness, pride, and independence would all like me to tell you that I’m completely fine here on my own– that every day I wake up ready to do the work the Lord has called me to do. While that is mostly true, there is still a hollowness and homesickness in this empty house that will remain until my students come on Monday and fill it.

But when I contrast the emptiness of my house with the way afternoon tea and deep belly-laughter with new friends has warmed my hands and heart, I see so much about the character of our beautiful God and what He is teaching me about Himself in this quiet time.

I have been constantly reminded here that God, like the people of this delightful little village, is a God who welcomes us in.

In Luke 14 Jesus tells a story of a great banquet that illustrates this characteristic of God.

“But He said to them, ‘A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come! For everything is ready now.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to the servant, ‘I have just bought a field and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ Yet another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’

So the servant came and reported these things to his master. The master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you have commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel my people to come in, that my house may be filled.’” (Luke 14:16-23)

This is what God has done for me here in Port Alsworth, but more importantly, this is what God has done for us all. He has invited us into His Kingdom, even though we are poor, crippled, blind, and lame.

He knows that we are imperfect, yet He calls us to Himself as we are.

He knows that I am poor in spirit and blind to His goodness most of the time, crippled by my own crap and sin, and oh so very lame, but He loves me anyway.

He loves you and me, and not just in the endearing, “I will take pity on you and give you the scraps from my feast,” kind of way. No, He loves us so much that He invites us in, out of the cold, grey climate of our hearts and calls us to sit at His table with Him.

Have tea with me. Tell me your heart. Let me love you. Let me heal you. Let me teach you what life is supposed to be like– life with Me. 

This is the call of the Creator of the universe.

Yet, I am so guilty of making up excuses, as the invited guests of the parable did. I have to clean the house. I have to do (insert important ministry task here) to ensure that (insert name here) gets to see Jesus. I have to… I have to… I have to… We all do it. I will never trivialize the importance of the daily tasks that God has called us to, or the life altering work that we have been called to as His followers.

But what if we are missing out on the most beautiful parts of our day? Our lives? All because we get caught up in the hustle of our lives and ourselves.

My hope and prayer is that Monday I would be able to stand undistracted, next to Jesus as my students show up at the front door of our new home, and I would be able to say to their hearts, “Welcome! Come in! There’s room for you here. Sit down, let’s have some warm tea and talk. I long to know you. I long for you to know my sweet Jesus the way I do. Don’t worry, He knows just how screwed up and crazy I am, and how scared you are to be in this new place with me. Yet loves us anyway.”

And as I get to do this in the middle of the Alaskan bush with the Tanalian Leadership Center, I hope that you can hear Jesus right where you are saying, “Come in! There’s room for you here, with Me. Sit down; I long for you to know Me and know the way that I love you. Don’t worry, I already know how screwed up and crazy you may feel, and how scared you are to be here with Me. But relax. I love you anyway.”

Oh, what the world could be like if we all looked to Jesus and held out our arms to the people He has placed in front of us, saying, “Come in! There’s still more room for you here with Jesus…”

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.”

(1 John 4:10-12)

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Focus or fall

OFCBandanasThere’s this leadership activity we do whenever we take our DSS students to the Outfitters for Christ ranch called the “Broken Body Game”. (Don’t worry– it’s no where near as morbid as it sounds.)

For this activity, the OFC staff hikes our students and their teacher chaperones a few miles into the woods and creates a tragic and extravagant hypothetical situation that usually goes something like this:

Last night, all ten of us boarded an airplane bound for Hawaii. On our way over these mountains, a bird was sucked into one of our engines and the plane went down. Tragically, all of the OFC staff and interns were killed on impact and the rest of you were severely injured in some way. The rescue helicopter has spotted you, but can’t land here due to the dense tree cover. The helicopter has landed in the pasture next to the ranch house, but you have to make it to them to receive medical care, as they won’t be able to find you on foot before night fall. You have to make sure that your whole team makes it to safety because if anyone is left behind in the woods tonight, they likely won’t make it to morning.

The OFC staff then takes out their infamous blue bananas and ties them around the “broken body parts” of the survivors.

Some have bandanas tied around their mouths signifying that they can’t speak. Some can’t use one or both of their legs or arms. Some have broken backs or hips and therefore must be carried to safety.

Or if you’re “lucky” (as I almost always am) you’re the sucker that gets blindfolded so you can’t see to help lead the team out of the woods.

The only rules of this game? You can’t use the body part that’s been injured and you must make sure your whole team makes it out of the woods alive.

I’ve played these OFC “reindeer games” several times and since I’m usually blind, the game is fairly simple for me; I usually just take the hand of someone whose arm is “broken” but who can verbally lead me out of the woods, and away we go.

A few miles and the occasional spill over a fallen tree, and I’m usually back to home base, safe and relatively sound.

This summer’s round was different though…

True to my normal “broken body game” status, my glasses were taken from me and replaced by a thick blue bandana.

As the students around me were given their “injuries”, I backed myself up to the fallen aspen I had been standing in front of and took a seat. After a few minutes, I heard the OFC staff shout, “Go!” I stood to my feet and felt someone grab my hand.

“Who are you?” I laughed, dramatically swinging my arms around, trying to distinguish who was grabbing me.

“It’s Mr. Clawson,” one of the seniors shouted back toward us. “He can’t talk.”

The mute leading the blind… Coooooool, I’m definitely gonna die. I thought as I started asking questions like an idiot.

“Do you know which way the road is?”

Silence. Right… He can’t talk.

I wandered forward with my arms extended out in front of me, cupped in Clawson’s hands. “Can you somehow tell me if I’m about to eat it?”

He shifted his hands from their cupped position, putting one of them in front of my fists. I stopped, confused. Just then I felt his other hand tap my foot.

“Step up?”

One tap.

“Does that mean yes?” I laughed.

Another tap.

“Okay, one tap for yes. Two taps for no. Sound good?”

One tap.

We walked like that, through thickets of wild rose bush, over fallen logs, across a small stream, and even under what I’m assuming was a giant tree branch just waiting to decapitate my very blind self. We communicated only in questions and faux Morse code. (And the occasional burst of nervous laughter.)

Our communication system was slow, but as long as I kept my full attention on the way Andrew’s hands were moving over and in front of my fists, I knew that we were gonna be fine. After two years of working on the same teaching team as Clawson, I knew I could trust him and I knew that we solved problems well together– with, or evidently without words.

At one point, we were doing so well with our very quiet communication that we caught up with two of our students– Jack, who didn’t have use of one of his arms, and Ricky, who was just as blind as I was. As we moved closer, I could hear Jack leading his classmate through the bushes.

“Okay, Ricky. You’re gonna take three small steps forward and then you’re going to pick up your right foot to climb over a small fallen log. You can steady yourself on my good arm. One… Two… Three…”

The temptation to listen to the directions ahead of me became too great for my little brain and as Jack said “Three…” my right foot unconsciously raised and slammed back into the flat ground in front of me. Andrew, worried that I was going to fall, began furiously tapping the front of my hands, warning me to stop.

“Sorry, I was focusing on Jack. My brain just couldn’t help it.” I admitted, embarrassed as I apologized to Clawson and he urged us forward.

For the next quarter mile, as we tailed Jack and Ricky, I struggled to keep my mental wires from getting crossed.

Focus on what is right here. Focus on what you’re being told now… I told myself every time I began to listen to the directions ahead and started to stumble.

~

With only five weeks until I leave for Alaska, I feel the tension of that mountain side in my heart everyday.

I’m here in Denver now. But I’m leaving soon.

I have to focus on what I’m doing here, even though my brain continuously tries to focus solely on the what lies ahead of me.

With every fundraising e-mail, item packed, and date ticked away in my journal, I’m walking toward Alaska. And most days I’m okay with that– I know I’m following Jesus. In fact, I can almost feel His hands over top of mine, guiding me quietly through this season of transition.

But some days, my mind wanders to the future and I stop focusing on the quiet (sometimes seemingly too quiet) direction that God is giving me everyday.

July 6th was one of those days when my lack of focus caused to me to fall.

It started just like the majority of my summer mornings did this year– with a quiet coffee date with Jesus on my front porch.

Quiet coffee soon turned into me realizing I was late for work, which turned into rushing through my work day, only to fight through rush hour traffic to make it to a dinner appointment with a supporter, barely on time.

Over Chipotle (Oh, how I’m going to miss Chipotle this next year), I sat and told a dear friend all about the call to go to Alaska. How clear it has been. How excited I am to go. How gracious God has been throughout the fundraising process.

At the end of it all, I looked down just in time to see my phone buzz, reminding me that I was going rock climbing with friends that evening.

Julie and I prayed, said our goodbyes, and I flew back out the door to my car.

And in that car ride on my way to the climbing gym, the tears that I didn’t realize I had been holding in all throughout dinner came pouring out of me. I had just finished rehashing Alaska for the umpteenth time, but suddenly something seemed so big and different.

All of the individual days of fundraising e-mails, prayer, quiet preparation, and packing had added up without me realizing it. Suddenly Alaska was only two months away and I felt like there was no more time left here in Denver.

My brain had launched itself into September, October, and November over the course of dinner with Julie, and suddenly I couldn’t help but worry about the directions and questions that lie ahead of me:

What will it look like to live with 5-1o teenage girls that I don’t know? What will it be like to never “leave” work? Am I cut out for this? Will I be a good enough teacher? Will I be able to relate to them? What the heck will I cook for them when all I know how to make from memory is Mexican food? Will they even like Mexican food? How on God’s-green-earth am I going to survive in a village for a year with minimal contact to the “outside world”?

My mind became so intensely focused on the future that I started tripping and stumbling all over the place– literally; I’ve never had such a rough go at rock climbing in my life. By the end of the night I was frustrated and embarrassed after falling from route, after route. Every time my fingers slipped off a hold and my body fell off the wall, I was instantly transported back to that first stumble on the mountain side during the Broken Body Game.

I bawled my eyes out on the highway driving home that night, only to get home, sit on the sofa with my roommates, and cry yet again.

I can’t go. I can’t. It’s too much. I can’t see what’s in front of me. I’m feel like I’m going to fall. I feel like I’m going to fail. I’m terrified. I sobbed into my hands while Amy sat with her arm around me and prayed.

Focus on Me. I’m telling you what is coming, but you don’t need to worry about that right now. Just focus on Me, here, now. I heard the Spirit, deep in my soul in between dramatic, heaving sobs.

Nearly a month later, it’s still an everyday battle to be here in Denver, in a season of mass transition, and to be here with Jesus. But that’s nothing new. Heck, before I even knew I was going to Port Alsworth, I struggled to be present and still where the Lord had put me.

But even as I struggle to be still, I praise God for the people that he has put next to me.

Thank you to those of you who constantly grab my fists and lead me back to Christ (and the realization that I’m still in Denver). Thank you to those of you who are walking this tension between the present and the future with me. Thank you to those of you who have sacrificed so that I may go, and simultaneously learn to stay.

While this season is definitely making me aware of just how broken my body and my heart may be, it is also a season of Good and Grace. And for that, I am incredibly thankful.

“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

(Psalm 46:10)

(If you’re interested in learning more about Port Alsworth, the Tanalian Leadership Center, and what my work will entail during my time in Alaska, click here. Or, if you’re interested in supporting my mission financially or in prayer, you can click here to learn more.)

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When lightening strikes

10RainThere’s a phenomenon that occurs between a father and a daughter during a storm that one of my coworkers at the Street School recounted several times this last year.

When it rains in the afternoon, my 4-year-old always knows exactly where I am. She stands a few feet away at the window with her siblings, their faces smushed against the glass watching the rain blow sideways outside. They watch in sheer awe at the power of the storm. They ooooh and ahhhh at the thunder and lightening– until it cracks on the street right in front of our house. 

Before I can blink, my daughter becomes a scarf– her arms and legs somehow both wrapped around my neck as I lounge on the sofa and laugh.

She knows the storm is still raging just feet away on the other side of that window, but she also knows that she is safe in her daddy’s arms. Such is the case with all daytime thunder storms.

But when a storm breaks out in the middle of the night and the claps of thunder wake her, it’s a different story.

Our bedrooms are only separated by a 3-foot hallway, and yet when thunder breaks in the middle of the night, you can just about bet that it will be followed by a small, squeaky voice yelling across the hall.

“Daaaaddddddyyyyy?! Daddy, where are you?!”

I usually flip on the light and see Tenley’s little silhouette standing just feet away in her bedroom door– paralyzed by fear.

Fear of the dark, the noise, the unexpected wake-up call.

In these moments in the middle of the night, she rarely runs to me. Instead, she stands in her doorway, in her sister’s too-big nightgown, with tears running down her face and her arms outstretched for me.

“Come here. You’re okay. You’re safe with me.” I groggily beckon her forward with my hands. In an instant, she’s my scarf again– arms and legs entangled with mine as I hug her and wipe away her tears.

She knows she’s safe in her father’s arms.

~

Wednesday evening I sat in the rocking chair on my front porch and watched lightning spread over Denver. As I watched the light show and felt the thunder in my chest, I thought back to the metaphor of Tenley and Chris and mentally cataloged all the times throughout this incredibly rainy month that fear has stopped me dead in my tracks.

Like Tenley, I’ve allowed myself to be paralyzed by fear too many times lately. I’ve stopped, just feet away from my Heavenly Father with tears streaming down my face and my arms slightly outstretched, yet feeling incapable of running to my safe place.

I’ve never really been one to struggle with fear, but over the last month there have been days where my fears have consumed me.

Fear of rejection.

Fear of change and the unknown.

Fear of the darkness.

Fear of jumping into things too quickly.

Fear of not moving quickly enough and missing the boat on opportunities.

Fear of catching a bad case of revertigo and getting sucked back into less than Christ-like habits from my past.

Irrational fears and completely rational fears.

We’ve all got them– these fears that seem to cement our feet to the floor and keep us from running to God when the storm gets too crazy or too close for comfort.

These fears, if we let them, will leave us feeling just out of the reach of our Heavenly Father.

They will lead us to doubt His sovereignty and goodness. They will become a breeding ground for lies from the enemy– lies that seem to tell us that God doesn’t love us because He’s not “actively” rescuing us from our fears.

But I believe that He doesn’t rescue us all the time because He wants us to run through the fear, into His arms.

He wants us to run to Him through the storm– both in the daylight and in the darkness.

I get it. It’s terrifying and counter-intuitive to quiet yourself before God in the midst of a life-hurricane and submit our fears to Him. I would much rather over-process things to death and try to find a logical solution to my problems than pray and listen, but that is what we are called to do.

That is where we will find safety in our Father’s arms.

What is your reaction when the lightening strikes?

~

“The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”

Deuteronomy 31:8