Everything Changes

5 months ago if you asked me about the World Race or Adventures in Missions, I would have tried to quickly skirt the topic. I wanted nothing to do with either, for no particular reason, just that I was hurting. Because when you fall out of a tree and you’re looking at your broken arm you blame the tree not yourself.

 

So there I was lying on the ground, shattered, barely breathing, with tear filled eyes. What was to blame besides every single imperfection I could possibly find in that tree. And after a fall like that you walk away vowing never to climb again, especially the one you fell from.

 

And months went by and everything was still very painful. Then in an instant the Lord completely re-directed my heart on a beautifully crisp Sunday in October.

 

On that exact day one year earlier I sat on a playground overlooking the most beautiful South African landscape you could imagine. I sat there with tears in my eyes after God whispered his love and the depth of his care for me. He reminded me that my dreams are important to Him and that it was a season of flourishing. It felt like my heart was coming alive in ways like never before. I had never felt so much like myself and everything seemed incredibly clear. But as all good gardeners know, the best time to prune, to cut away old dead branches to give a chance for increased fruitfulness and growth, is right after it has flourished. The next 7 months of my race was just that, a very painful and difficult and terrible process of the Lord preparing me for the next season of flourishing.

 

I completely lost sight of that promise. The promise that one day after I healed, I would flourish again, and even more so.

 

And where there is no vision, the people perish.

 

So there I was lying on the ground, shattered, barely breathing, with tear filled eyes when the Lord reminded me of that beautiful South African day and those promises.

 

And life began to return to my dormant heart.

 

 

Which brings us to the thing I said I would NEVER do:

 

A few days after this complete heart shift and revelation and return of breath to my bones, a good friend texted me. The kind of good friend that’s actually probably one of your best friends, the one who knows you as well as anyone could, and lets you know when you can do better and climb higher, but rests in the valleys with you when you need it; the kind of friend who prays for you in ways that you don’t even know you need, and the one who definitely knows that neither of you would ever consider associating with Adventures in Missions ever again.

 

And the question is posed: would I ever consider squad leading? My immediate and initial answer is nooooooooooooo. But I erased that and thought about it. After this reawakening of my heart I remembered that it wasn’t necessarily the trees fault that my dismount was less than graceful. Maybe I had passed too much judgment on the tree and maybe I have a lot more grace in my heart now. So I responded something to the effect of, ‘not in my current plans, but if someone asked me to work for Adventures I would consider’.

 

(Okay so maybe a little prideful, that’s a struggle.)

 

But there it was. I was open to something that I was once completely cut off from. If that text had come only a few days prior, my original answer would have stood firm. But it was a new dawn. Later that same day I got a message from one of my friends working at AIM, this is the kind of friend that you haven’t talked to in the 5 months of being home from the race, so an out of the blue message from him was just that, completely out of the blue. He said there were some job opportunities opening up at Adventures and for some reason he thought I might be a good fit for them.

 

To make a long story short, I made a few seemingly impossible deals with the Lord. The ones that go, ‘If these 4 impossible things happen, then I’ll work there’. You know he laughs at those. And guess what, they happened and now I’m working at AIM in the Short Term Missions department.

 

I’m climbing that tree again, but why? This was my prayer and my question the first two weeks of work. And the Lord answered me within a week. The why, was given to me in a room full of people, guitars, and a harp. It’s a new season, it’s a big season, it’s the scariest season I’ve ever been invited into and it’s called DREAM.

 

And literally as I am about to post this blog, the words “Dare to let God take you where you’ve never gone so that He can produce in you what you’ve never seen” appear on my phone via Twitter text from Mike Patz. What a timely, scary, and exciting creed to carry walking into the new year of dreams.