Lead and I Will Follow...

A piece of my heart has been missing… I wasn’t sure where it was or where I had left it, all I knew was that over the last few months a piece of me has been missing. I haven’t been engaged in work at all, my mind just was nowhere to be found there. My relationships while very good weren’t quite right. My hunger in life, my passion, my fury, my intensity, the part of me that makes me me was missing… I didn’t know where it was all I knew was that a piece of me was missing. It began seemingly small, I didn’t really notice it and then when I did I wrote it off as part of the natural evenflow of life, just a temporary valley, but it persisted and eventually hit me hard and I was forced to realize that a piece of me was gone, it was off somewhere else, my life wasn’t being lived to the capacity I was made for…

I found the missing piece this week… I’d left it in Tijuana, Mexico in January when I was there. When I revisited this week I realized that was where this huge chunk of my heart now resided. Throughout the week at the orphanage we stay at I remembered what it was like to smile, not because of a funny joke, but merely because you see God so strongly at work, merely because you are so content and happy just where you are at. I remembered what it was like to be passionate again, to be lit on fire. I remembered what true joy and love looked like and just how beautiful they could be. I remembered what it felt like to truly smile and laugh again. I found my missing piece and I realized it was left in Tijuana for a reason. I realized that it would continue to stay in Tijuana, the only place that I’d feel truly alive right now is Tijuana. It was left there because that is where I am being called, that is where I belong, at least for right now. That is where God wants me and that is where I am needed. I realized that the only thing scarier than moving across the nation, into a foreign country where the crime rate is high and perceived risk of danger is huge, where I don’t speak their language and have to learn a new culture… the only thing scarier than going to this place is not going and trying to live my life “safely” and “comfortably” here in Indianapolis with a huge part of me missing.

I’m not willing to be called and not go. I’m not willing to not live in to the person that God made me to be. I’m not willing to not use every last gift that God blessed me with. My prayer to God for the last year and a half has been “Lead and I will follow” He is leading me in to this and I must follow. So I will set out on a scary and risky journey straight in to the arms of my King, obediently listening and seeking.

Lord willing, I will be sent…

Hurricane

One of my favorite snapshots from Training School, one of the most powerful times, the only time I cried all year came in Tijuana. One night our group got together in the dining area and decided to have worship time. Tony, one of our members, played the guitar and had a few songs prepared for us. He proceeded through a couple songs on his list and then came to Oh How He Loves Us as he played it and we all sang along the weight of God fell on us and we felt His Spirit near, we were all moved and something special was happening. Larry then gently starting telling us a story about visiting his son in Chicago before his son left for Israel for a month. He explained how the logistics weren’t working out perfectly and it came down to the one day Larry could drive the 4 hours to spend the day with him his son had to work. Then he explained this conversation with his son after this road bump, how he explained to him that even if he could only see him on his break, even if it were only for 5 minutes it would be worth it because that was just how much he loved him… I remembered thinking how beautiful that was and then he explained how that was his love merely as an earthly father and how much more must God love each and every one of us as our true Heavenly Father… the weight hit us, the immensity of his love, the vastness, the power… there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. We then sang the song again, all of us with tears flooding down our face as God spoke straight in to each of our hearts and whispered how much he loved us, something that we don’t get that we can’t imagine, that we all miss so often. It was heavy and beautiful… The song became known as the “Hurricane” song in Training School and was our favorite song, we held it dearly.

He is jealous for me
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy
When all of a sudden
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory
And I realise just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me

And O how He loves us
Oh, O how He loves us
How He loves us all

Yeah He loves us
O how He loves us
O how He loves us
O how He loves

We are His portion and He is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If grace is an ocean, we're all sinking
So Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don't have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way

And O how He loves us
Oh, O how He loves us
How He loves us all

Yeah He loves us
O how He loves us
O how He loves us
O how He loves

I spent the past week in Tijuana again, Larry was also there but the rest of the group was different which was good yet hard as we missed those we’d journeyed with all year. Tony, our guitar player, was supposed to go but decided not to last minute. As Larry and I discussed it we both understood the decision but were very sad we’d miss our on his worship music, I think both of us were hoping to hear the “Hurricane” song again and connect with it again down there. Our second night in to the trip we had a good group sharing time and at the end Larry asked one of the guys who plays the guitar to pick a song and play it for us. He started to play and Larry and my eyes met right away as our jaws both dropped… he’d chosen our Hurricane song knowing nothing of our story with it. From that moment on I knew God was right there beside us. I remembered just how big he is and just how able he is to provide for us right when we need it and how we need it. I remember what a good God he is, that loves us well.

Go here to listen to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxTOsQ3LDE4

Compelled to Walk, with Fear

In college I was a goalie. We were a big enough program and fortunate enough that we, the goalies, got our very own coach to give us one-on-one, specific attention. The rest of the team ran sprints and we worked on ladders, plyo boxes, and getting up quick off the ground. The rest of the team worked on foot skills as we perfected our hands and our diving. The rest of the team learned how to float a nice ball through the air and we learned how to read it and how to shove any of those other people out of our way to get there. We were very trained, very programmed to be goalies first and that meant having a very different perspective and read on the game. We spent hours everyday standing just in front of a line, a large metal box behind us and someone coming at us with a ball at their feet. We spent hours a day repeatedly learning how to read the ball, how to position our bodies, how to position our defenders, how to communicate accurately so that that little ball would not get past us. And, when it did, we’d get back up and start replaying the whole thing in our mind to figure out what went wrong, what we possibly could have done different to make sure it would be a save next time and we had a coach there to assist us in figuring this out.

As I step back and look at this it would seem quite possible that we could, and quite honestly probably have at some point in our past, played a great game, just been on fire making 14 spectacular saves and reading the game well, communicating well and then make one minor mistake that turns in to a goal. At the end of the game we could, and have, walk away from that game thinking, “I failed, my entire purpose was to keep that ball out of the net and it went in.” You see we can so easily merely focused on our aspect of the game, we were goalies so we had one main vision: don’t let the ball get past you. My goalie coach was definitely always trying to teach me how to keep the ball out of the back of the net, that was the point, BUT if I allowed myself to get too focused on this specific big vision I may easily miss out on the fact that my team also has an offense. My team also has a well-trained nucleus at the other end trying to get the ball in the back of the other team’s net. And if I lose sight of the big picture and get too focused just on my vision I may miss the fact that, though I did let in one goal, my team scored 2 goals and thus we won! In the big picture it’s a victory but if I get too caught up on my specifics I may miss this altogether. After all my vision was to not let a goal in but the overall objective and big picture for the team (which would include me) is to win.

Though my coach spent everyday at practicing teaching me and training me to keep the ball out of the back of the net at the end of the day that is just the vision, she, along with the head coach, never thought I’d keep it out of the net every time, they knew it’d go in sometimes, but they still gave me the bigger vision to aim at. At the end of the games where I played like I stated above, on fire, my coach never came up to me and looked at me with disappointment, they saw the good, they saw the big picture and all of the successes in my endeavor to achieve the vision and the overall team objective being attained. In life we so often get caught up on the vision, it becomes the only thing that we see. We forget to look at the big picture and embrace the successes. Jesus laid out a compelling vision for each of us, he doesn’t expect us to achieve it perfectly, but he does ask that we walk towards it. He does ask that we don’t look at perfection as the overall goal and thus let fear encroach on our willingness to try. Like my coaches, He knows we won’t achieve it perfectly and that isn’t His aim anyways, he knows that what we do accomplish will be beautiful and he desires to rejoice with us as we push and walk towards it. He gives us vision not as something to be attained but as something that gets us walking in the right direction as he guides every step we take.