somewhere between silence & screaming

Well, as I said yesterday, life is quite different December 2010 than it was December 2009.  Last year, I was finishing up my last semester, panicked over our move to Orlando, but at the same time desperate to live in the same state as my husband again.  I was frustrated that I had spent so much time and energy building contacts around Nashville only to move away from them all in an incredibly difficult economy.  I kept asking God why here, why Orlando.  I can’t give you all the answers right now, but it has been pretty amazing to watch what he has done for us this year.

Due to the economy, large number of universities in Central Florida, and my lack of networking before moving, I had really expected a good 3 to 5 months of job hunting before finding anything.  To my shock and delight, I landed a job in the industry I wanted within 5 weeks of moving.  It almost felt like God telling me, “See?  I know what I’m doing.”

The next step in making Clermont home was finding a place to get plugged into our church.  By mid-February, we started attending a Life Group on Wednesday nights.  The demographic was quite different than the group we left behind in Murfreesboro, but we also recognized Clermont isn’t a college town & it’s a lot smaller than the Boro in general, so young marrieds in their early 20s were expectedly more difficult to find.  Josh fit into the group pretty quickly, but for me, it wasn’t so easy.  I haven’t had to actively make friends in years.  I’ve known my closest friends for over a decade.  This entire year has taught me how much I still have to grow in both boldness and love so that I can build relationships and not cower behind fear of judgement.  I still have moments where I feel like we’re so young to live the life we do, and there’s both a battle between pride about and it and yet a feeling of inadequacy or “not belonging” around those older than us simply due to age and experiences.  Those are areas of my life that I need to work on that I probably wouldn’t have recognized if we hadn’t moved here.

I knew when we moved here that I wanted to get involved with serving in some capacity.  After babysitting for a women’s shelter and mentoring with a prison ministry fell through, I was incredibly frustrated that doors weren’t opening for me to serve.  I looked at the girls I went to high school with and saw them doing incredible things all over the world, literally, and I felt like I wasn’t doing my part for the Kingdom.  As month after month passed with no prospects to serve, I almost got angry with God that he wasn’t letting me serve him the way I wanted to.  How twisted is that?  It was at that time I realized why he probably was shutting doors.  It’s like he was looking at me saying, “If you’re only going to serve to glorify yourself, then I’m not interested. When you’re ready to glorify me, we can talk.”

Not much later, we went to Tennessee for the 4th of July, and another curveball was thrown at me.

As much as I wanted to serve, there was one area I really knew I didn’t want to do.   High schoolers.  In my mind, I was a wreck in high school and had no business stepping in to guide girls through situations that I had so royally screwed up when I was in their shoes.  I had friends who had an absolute passion for youth ministry.  I assumed my lack of passion meant I didn’t have to worry about being “called” there.

So there I was, talking to my freshman-in-high-school cousin and her friend about some stuff going on in their lives & telling them some of my experiences from high school in hopes that they wouldn’t make the mistakes I did, when it hit me from out of nowhere that this is what I was supposed to be doing.  It was like this slow motion revelation with a long “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” after it.  I kept saying to God, “Really?  Really?!  Come on.  Anywhere but there.  Seriously, anywhere.  What about prison ministry?  I will literally go into prisons and guide Bible studies if you will let me off the hook for working with high schoolers.”  That’s right.  Just call me Jonah.

But it was undeniable from that point.  Once you know what God wants you to do, you can’t not know it.  I couldn’t escape it or bargain, so I got home, emailed a few people, and tried to figure out my next step.  I thought, “Well, I’m so young that I really don’t think older high schoolers will respect me.  I’ll ask for 9th grade.  In 9th grade, they’re excited about high school so hopefully they’ll be a little more welcoming.”

One of the first things I’m told?  The needed volunteers are for 10th or 11th grade.  Awesome.

So I ended up with 10th grade, which was not 9th grade, but I figured it was what it was and I’d roll with it. 

I’m sad to say that I was preparing for my first couple of weeks working with the high schoolers, I was not very excited.  To me, it was a call to obedience, not to passion.  In other words, I was doing it because I knew God was telling me to, not because I wanted to or that I believed he could really use me in it.

After the first week with the girls, I was feeling surprisingly optimistic.  I had been warned that I would likely only have a handful, but I had 16.  I felt pretty pleased with the possibilities.

But then the next week I only had 7 girls, and I thought, “What’s wrong with me?  Why don’t they like me?”  And God said, “I thought we agreed this isn’t about you.  Stop being so silly, and just trust me.”  And I said, “Okay.”

The numbers wavered from then on, once getting as low as 2, and as high as 11, but never again as high as the first night.  But pretty soon, the numbers didn’t matter.  When there were fewer girls, I got the opportunity to know the girls that were there better.  When there were several, I got the opportunity to ask questions with a variety of feedback.  God was faithful, because that’s just who he is.  He’s always faithful.  He turned a call to obedience into an undeniable, ridiculous, amazing passion.

Just when I had gotten comfortable, there was a push for one-on-one discipleship.  I looked at my schedule and the list of girls I was to disciple and wondered, “how will this ever work?”   I was nervous about meeting one-on-one.  I ran questions they might ask through my mind and wondered how I’d answer them without revealing what a mess I had been at their age.  I was scared my knowledge of the Bible wouldn’t be sufficient and I’d cause more confusion than clarity.  AKA - my faith plummetted even though God had delivered time and time and time again.  I prayed over it, and told God this:  “There is certain stuff I’m not going to volunteer, but if they ask me directly or if the situation calls for it, I will never lie to them.  I will never disguise who I was, because if I do that, it hides what you did in me.  I just hope you’ll take over this whole thing and help me say what you’d want me to say.  Please don’t let anything false about you come out of my mouth.  If I don’t have the Biblical knowledge to back it up, I pray you’ll speak through me or just take away my ability to speak so that I can’t malign your Truth.  Either way, please don’t let anything that doesn’t accurately represent and glorify you come out of my mouth.”

It’s been a month, and my world has changed.  As I study the Word while preparing to teach others, my priorities have shifted.  The way I take in information is different.  My integrity and work ethic are better.  My marriage is better.  My heart is better.  I’ve struggled with depression for years, but I haven’t noticed it in weeks.  Has life gone perfectly?  No.  I still get stressed over work sometimes.  Enterprise wants money that doesn’t belong to them.  Imperfections in life still happen.  From the outside looking in, nothing has changed.   But I have.  My thoughts and priorities have.  And I love knowing that once you know, you can’t go back.  When you’ve had this much Jesus, the things of this world really and truly grow strangely dim. 

I wish I could explain that to people, but sometimes it’s so hard to put into words.  Following Christ doesn’t make me any less intelligent or pathetically weak or judgemental or prideful or less fun.   I’ve traded being bound by human logic to being free in faith.  I’ve traded in my weakness for Christ’s strength, judgement for forgiveness, pride for humility, earthly pleasures for eternal joy.  I know it sounds crazy sometimes from the outside, but I know if those who don’t understand would just take that tiny step of faith and just pray for truth or commit to reading the Bible every day for a month… God is faithful.  He is constant, reliable, and he always keeps His word.  My prayer for so many has been that they would have to make the choice & that ignorance wouldn’t be an option.  I love that we’re sent to tell, because it’s so important that people know.  If anyone says, “no one told me,” that’s on us. 

Romans 10:11-15

As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

Well, this took a random turn.  Sorry to go on such a tangent.  There’s been a lot more that has happened while here, but maybe I’ll save that for part 2?