Worry is what happens when you take God out of the equation. It sounds simple, but if you think about it, the implications can be huge.
I'm a dreamer and a detail person...it's a frustrating combination sometimes. Most of my ideas are immediately followed by a deluge of details and "what ifs." It can be downright paralyzing. As I was wading through a discouraging onslaught yesterday, God stopped me and reminded me that I had left Him out of the equation.
So, for 2012, I am committing to keep God in my equations. I will still be asking "what if" because it is important, but I will follow what question with a greater one.
So, what if God...?
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
Redeeming My Limits - Part 2
I'm grinning slightly at the irony that surrounds writing this entry. I've been planning to write on this subject for a while now. Up until Tuesday it was going to be a retrospective piece. In this second part of "Redeeming My Limits" (read Part 1 here), I was going to reflect on how God had used my limits to teach me about accepting sudden redirection and how He had redeemed the disappointment I experienced with my back injury over the past five years.
To sum up, I was going to tell the tale of how the change of my summer plans led to an unexpected internship, which turned into a job which led to the freelancing journey that placed me in the path of Speedy. Eventually Speedy recruited me to work at Glorieta - the amazingly beautiful piece of New Mexico where my dreams of wrangling in the wild west were fulfilled. My time at Glorieta in turn and quite unexpectedly led me to my current job where I use the skills that I learned in that unexpected internship and subsequent job. The skill with which each of those threads was woven is incredible. It was a tumultuous journey at the time, but the view looking back is incredible.
It is that view that allows me to grin as I write that my trip to Ecuador was canceled on Tuesday. Seemingly out of the blue, Samaritan's Purse has decided to close their base in Ecuador and thus is canceling all of the trips they had planned to send there. After I got the call on Tuesday, I kept asking myself if it had really happened or if I had dreamed it. This process seems so easy for other people - they sign up for mission trips and they go on mission trips. However, this is the second time I have received a resounding "no go" after following God's leading to sign up.
Here is where I come to the complexities of what I feel versus what I know. The feeling part is quite disappointed and wants to pitch a small fit about "my" mission trips. However, deep down I know that they are not mine to begin with and am prompted to take a look at the intricate tapestry behind me. The same loving Father who wove those threads is at work here too. And so, in the midst of the dark threads of disappointment, there is also a glittering thread of hope. The trail has turned, but that does not mean that the adventure has ended, it just means that it will look different than expected. And, if recent history is any indication, the unexpected can be quite exciting. And so we journey on...
P.S. I'm still looking for an international missions opportunity between now and April... if anyone has any ideas, let me know!
To sum up, I was going to tell the tale of how the change of my summer plans led to an unexpected internship, which turned into a job which led to the freelancing journey that placed me in the path of Speedy. Eventually Speedy recruited me to work at Glorieta - the amazingly beautiful piece of New Mexico where my dreams of wrangling in the wild west were fulfilled. My time at Glorieta in turn and quite unexpectedly led me to my current job where I use the skills that I learned in that unexpected internship and subsequent job. The skill with which each of those threads was woven is incredible. It was a tumultuous journey at the time, but the view looking back is incredible.
It is that view that allows me to grin as I write that my trip to Ecuador was canceled on Tuesday. Seemingly out of the blue, Samaritan's Purse has decided to close their base in Ecuador and thus is canceling all of the trips they had planned to send there. After I got the call on Tuesday, I kept asking myself if it had really happened or if I had dreamed it. This process seems so easy for other people - they sign up for mission trips and they go on mission trips. However, this is the second time I have received a resounding "no go" after following God's leading to sign up.
Here is where I come to the complexities of what I feel versus what I know. The feeling part is quite disappointed and wants to pitch a small fit about "my" mission trips. However, deep down I know that they are not mine to begin with and am prompted to take a look at the intricate tapestry behind me. The same loving Father who wove those threads is at work here too. And so, in the midst of the dark threads of disappointment, there is also a glittering thread of hope. The trail has turned, but that does not mean that the adventure has ended, it just means that it will look different than expected. And, if recent history is any indication, the unexpected can be quite exciting. And so we journey on...
P.S. I'm still looking for an international missions opportunity between now and April... if anyone has any ideas, let me know!
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Redeeming My Limits - Part 1
At this point five years ago, I was preparing to go on my first
international mission trip. The team of students from my college was
meeting regularly to plan and pray for our early March trip to Puebla,
Mexico. After years of reading missionary stories and dreaming of where I
would go as soon as I had the chance, it was finally here! I was
thrilled. Then, just weeks before we were slated to leave, my life
hit a sudden and unexpected speed bump.
I was a fairly active and healthy twenty-something. But, the morning after an intramural basketball game, I woke up and knew that something was very wrong. What had been occasional back pain had suddenly flared into a blinding pain that I could not escape. After a miraculously fast MRI, I went to see the sports medicine specialist who had just opened a clinic on campus that month (another miracle). He started to give me a lecture on how some people just suffer from chronic back pain and I asked him if he had looked at my MRI. He left the room to do so and returned wide eyed. "You're in a lot of pain, aren't you?" It was all I could do to not roll my eyes and groan. "Yes, I am," I answered. "You have the back of a forty year-old steel worker," he replied and proceeded to tell me that I had two herniated discs in the lumbar region of my spine.
There was no good explanation for why the discs were herniated, they just were. And that meant major and immediate lifestyle changes for me. No lifting anything over five pounds (my laptop at the time weighed more than that), no sitting for more than twenty minutes at a time (yes, professor, I will be standing up at regular intervals during your class) and, if you make this any worse, you may lose function below the waist (ie, if walking is important to you, you'd better follow instructions). The next week was a blur of coping with pain, barely managing to get through classes, learning how to do homework while flat on my back and discovering that my body did not like the steroids the doctor prescribed to bring down the swelling (oh, and since your blood pressure has shot through the roof, make sure you don't do anything that raises your pulse).
Exhausted, frustrated and scared, I prayed with my team that God would heal me and intervene to somehow allow me to still take the trip to Mexico. The doctor indulgently gave me a week to see what would happen and then gave me a firm "no way." The risk of further injury without access to good medical care was too much - and besides, the plane ride would be pure torture as I still could not sit comfortably. And so, they went without me. I was heartbroken. However, life had suddenly become so painful and complicated that I did not have the strength to deal with it in the moment. So, I gave the pieces to God and asked Him to hold them for me. Quietly and gently He assured me that He was not just holding the pieces, but was holding me as well. He knew my pain (Isaiah 53:4).
After several months of strict limits, NSAIDs and physical therapy, the pain gradually subsided and it became apparent that I would retain the use of my legs and lead at least a semi-normal life. God was answering my prayer for healing, albeit much more slowly and less dramatically that I would have preferred. It also became apparent that the road to recovery would be a long, slow one with many changes and lasting limitations. Many of my plans - including my dream of international mission work - were put on hold indefinitely as I worked to get better and wondered how much better I would get.
Complete surrender is never easy, but when you're literally flat on your back, you don't have much choice in the matter. God has used that extremely painful time in my life to significantly redirect my path and draw me closer to Him. Over the last five years, He has not only "taken away" (Job 1:21) but also given me more than I could dream. Daily, He is working things together for good as only He can (Romans 8:28). He is redeeming my limits (more on this later). And, in that neat way that only a loving Father can, He has brought many of my dreams full circle in ways that I never expected...
At this point, five years later, I'm preparing to go on my first international mission trip. In February, I will be traveling as a part of a team of volunteers with Samaritan's Purse to Ecuador. We will be part of an on-going effort to help build a structure for a local church that currently meets in three homes. And though I'm not the most obvious choice for a construction trip, God has opened the door for me to serve in some auxiliary ways, including doing after-school Bible story and song time with some of the children (so fun!). Stay tuned for more details and stories of how God continues to redeem my limits for His glory.
To be continued...
I was a fairly active and healthy twenty-something. But, the morning after an intramural basketball game, I woke up and knew that something was very wrong. What had been occasional back pain had suddenly flared into a blinding pain that I could not escape. After a miraculously fast MRI, I went to see the sports medicine specialist who had just opened a clinic on campus that month (another miracle). He started to give me a lecture on how some people just suffer from chronic back pain and I asked him if he had looked at my MRI. He left the room to do so and returned wide eyed. "You're in a lot of pain, aren't you?" It was all I could do to not roll my eyes and groan. "Yes, I am," I answered. "You have the back of a forty year-old steel worker," he replied and proceeded to tell me that I had two herniated discs in the lumbar region of my spine.
There was no good explanation for why the discs were herniated, they just were. And that meant major and immediate lifestyle changes for me. No lifting anything over five pounds (my laptop at the time weighed more than that), no sitting for more than twenty minutes at a time (yes, professor, I will be standing up at regular intervals during your class) and, if you make this any worse, you may lose function below the waist (ie, if walking is important to you, you'd better follow instructions). The next week was a blur of coping with pain, barely managing to get through classes, learning how to do homework while flat on my back and discovering that my body did not like the steroids the doctor prescribed to bring down the swelling (oh, and since your blood pressure has shot through the roof, make sure you don't do anything that raises your pulse).
Exhausted, frustrated and scared, I prayed with my team that God would heal me and intervene to somehow allow me to still take the trip to Mexico. The doctor indulgently gave me a week to see what would happen and then gave me a firm "no way." The risk of further injury without access to good medical care was too much - and besides, the plane ride would be pure torture as I still could not sit comfortably. And so, they went without me. I was heartbroken. However, life had suddenly become so painful and complicated that I did not have the strength to deal with it in the moment. So, I gave the pieces to God and asked Him to hold them for me. Quietly and gently He assured me that He was not just holding the pieces, but was holding me as well. He knew my pain (Isaiah 53:4).
After several months of strict limits, NSAIDs and physical therapy, the pain gradually subsided and it became apparent that I would retain the use of my legs and lead at least a semi-normal life. God was answering my prayer for healing, albeit much more slowly and less dramatically that I would have preferred. It also became apparent that the road to recovery would be a long, slow one with many changes and lasting limitations. Many of my plans - including my dream of international mission work - were put on hold indefinitely as I worked to get better and wondered how much better I would get.
Complete surrender is never easy, but when you're literally flat on your back, you don't have much choice in the matter. God has used that extremely painful time in my life to significantly redirect my path and draw me closer to Him. Over the last five years, He has not only "taken away" (Job 1:21) but also given me more than I could dream. Daily, He is working things together for good as only He can (Romans 8:28). He is redeeming my limits (more on this later). And, in that neat way that only a loving Father can, He has brought many of my dreams full circle in ways that I never expected...
At this point, five years later, I'm preparing to go on my first international mission trip. In February, I will be traveling as a part of a team of volunteers with Samaritan's Purse to Ecuador. We will be part of an on-going effort to help build a structure for a local church that currently meets in three homes. And though I'm not the most obvious choice for a construction trip, God has opened the door for me to serve in some auxiliary ways, including doing after-school Bible story and song time with some of the children (so fun!). Stay tuned for more details and stories of how God continues to redeem my limits for His glory.
To be continued...
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