breathing

So last weekend I went on a little getaway trip with a couple of my roommates to Lake Malwai (in Malwai obvi).  At one point we commented on how many shorelines we have been lucky enough to stand on in the past couple years.  From the current, one of the largest and most unique lakes in the world, to Lake Kariba, the Zambezi, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, and the point where those last two oceans meet.  How crazy. 

I spent a lot of time sitting on the beach those few days, headphones in, contemplating and praying about...well lots of things.  I was on a little bit of a Needtobreathe kick that weekend, and coincidentally (/probably not), I came across one song, Something Beautiful (I know, I’m late to the party, its old – I live in the 3^rd world, lay off) that I just kept playing on repeat.  It opens saying, “In Your ocean I’m ankle deep, I feel the waves crashing on my feet.  It’s like I know where I need to be, but I can’t figure out – “

I guess the line caught my attention, and well the rest of the song just seemed ethereally relevant to my life, so I kept playing it.  As we’ve returned back to Lusaka, I’ve kept it in my frequent song rotation; in the car, during my quiet times, etc.  So as I started off on an overdue return to running today, it of course started playing as I turned the corner onto the farm road.

Again, I took notice of the opening line, but something sparked as I heard the subsequent second line “…I can’t figure out, just how much air I will need to breathe, when your tide rushes over me.  There’s only one way to figure out – will you let me drown, will you let me drown?

This was probably the 100^th time I’d heard the beginning of this song in the last week, literally, but my eyes widened mid-stride as the Holy Spirit used this time to click my lens of reflection into place.

My mind immediately did another tv style montage (this is apparently how my spiritual mind works) of the last several months, months that were hard…maybe the hardest I’ve ever lived.  My mind then hyper-rewound even further, to the beginning of my time here, and to the first blog I wrote.  I had made reference to the Peter and Jesus walking on water story, and indicated, like Peter had, I was about to step out of the boat.

When I think back to those first several months living here, I realize in a lot of ways, God graciously let me walk on water.  Sure there were struggles and challenges, but He allowed our gaze to remain locked for a bit and I was able to experience that sole (/soul…ha) skimming on water sensation.

And then, somewhere along the way, I think my eyes started to look nervously around, and lose my gaze.  I fought to maintain it, but the eyelids of my faith started to blink rapidly, what I had seen in my peripheral, started to become my increasing focus.   And I began to sink.  Oh man, did I start to sink. 

I think of the part of the story where Peter starts to sink.  The resonating element to me now especially, is just how much Peter sank.  He yelled out “Lord, save me!”  I imagine that means he wasn’t like slowly and calmly descending a couple inches at a time into the water.  No, for him to frantically yell that out, homeboy had to have been pretty much drowning, or at least feeling like he was.  And Jesus let him get to that point.  (I mean depending on your theology, we could say Christ caused him to get to that point, but whatever.)  Right as Peter’s pinky toe had started to lower beneath the water ledge he was perched on, Jesus could’ve stopped it; he could’ve reasserted the gaze just then, telling him “dude – get it together.”  But He didn’t.  I think He let him feel like he was drowning for a sec.  I imagine then with His head tilted a bit, ear leaning in towards his disciple-in-shambles, waited for that inevitable plea of desperation.  And as Peter cried out, He nodded, ah-there it is, “sure homee, I was here the whole time, how did you forget that?”

Enter in-my last several months.  I think for the most part, God let me feel like I was drowning for a while there.  Now I don’t know what it feels like to be literally drowning in the ocean, stuck in the open water, having wave after wave crashing down, trying to gasp for air in between each blow (though I have been stuck under a blow up boat for a few seconds in my parents’ pool as a child, so like, I kinda know), but I think I can imagine.   I picture Satan behind the waves, seeing me at weak points, and hurling tides of loneliness, insecurity, homesickness, failure, etc in an almost masterful sequence.  Getting to be a part of the summer Camp Life season here, where hundreds of Americans and thousands and thousands of Zambian kids are being lavished in God’s fatherly love, getting to even witness that week after week provided nothing short of life-sustaining gasps.  But holy smokes, the crashing waves still swelled. 

Mid-summer, I met up with my mom in London for a week.  Looking back, I feel like God used that time with her to keep me going, as in like breathing.  It was like she came by on a little boat, took my face in her hands, and held it there above water for a couple minutes.  And then, to be honest – a little to my surprise, she let me go again.  She put me back in the water and assured me that she knew that God had me in His hand, He would keep me from drowning (well, in so many words).  Some of you that I saw or heard from me this summer, I know may have been a tad bit worried that alas, I may have been taking in water at an alarming rate and needed like a life guard intervention or something.   But no, my mom, the rockstar of faith she is, knew better.  And you know what?  She was right.  I didn’t drown.

And what I realized on my run today, is that I never will; I can’t.  As believers, we can’t.  The oceans of hardship and despair that Satan has at his disposal can make us feel like we might, but as we cry out, His hand is already there outstretched; He was there the whole time. 

So I feel now, a bit like I’ve been washed up on the beach, still somewhat gasping to catch my breath.  I’m still coughing out the lies of Satan, the aspirating of his deceit is still burning in my nose and throat.  But honestly? As I’m starting to sit up on my elbows now, looking back at the choppy sea before me, thinking “yikes, that was intense,” I’m acutely aware, this is not where I’m meant to remain.  We aren’t made to sit on the beach, or even play and swim along the shore, we’re made to walk on water.  

In few weeks, I get to go home to the States for a month or so, a time I plan to shake any remaining water out of my ears, take some friends and family infused deep breaths, then jump back in.  Come October though, I’ll be standing at that shoreline with a little different perceptive. It’s funny, feeling like you might almost drown gives you the benefit of knowing your lungs capacity.  Arguably, stretching your lungs capacity further than it had been before.  Ah, well played God.

So regardless of the ocean, regardless if He changes the direction of the journey, I’m starting to breathe deep again in His faithfulness, His promise that He’ll never let us drown, and His call to walk towards Him on top of the water.

bet you forgot I had a blog

So remember when I said I was awful at pretty much every type of non-face to face communication?  The blog idea was my best attempt to remedy this issue, but as I now submit my 5^th entry roughly 12 months after its predecessor, I think I’ve proved my point.  Regardless, they say you’ve got to get back on the horse at some point right? 

So here’s me, getting back on my blogging horse, hoping I don’t fall off again.

I think one of the culprits for my such expansive gap in posts is that situation that happens with any prolonged communication - “gosh, it’s been so long, where do I even start?’  Followed by another month of silence, further exacerbating the issue, “now really, where do I start?”  And so it goes.

So I’m going to start with right now.  That seems less overwhelming than trying to recount all the major events and associated thoughts and feelings since last March.

Today marks a month since I boarded a plane back to Zambia after a month home in the States.  5 weeks actually that seemed like whirlwind tours of DFW and Chicagoland.  The time felt packed with friends and family, old people, new people, favorite places, different places, familiar and unexpected, and a few weeks out now, I can definitively say – it was wonderful.  Amazing.  It was restorative and restful and rejuvenating, and all of the other positive “r” words.  It wasn’t just a fun time, it was reviving of the heart-style good.  Because one thing I can tell you about the last year – it was hard.  It was great, but it was hard. 

Lusaka isn’t exactly the Paris of the sub-Saharan like you may have heard.  I sit here now looking at the faint circular scar on the sole of my foot, the reminder of the day in September I stepped on a rusty nail- through my sneaker, right up in there.  That same week I realized my jeans had been getting super baggy; turned out it wasn’t stress, but a parasite.  *In other news, anti-biotics are the bomb (for all of the above).

But come to think of it, those weren’t really even the hard parts.  To be honest, all the 3^rd-worldy stuff you kind of get used to.  You forget what it’s like to have super consistent electricity and water.  That devastation that you missed last week’s episode of Scandal begins to fade as you miss like 23 episodes in a row.  You forget what Starbucks and Chick-fila actually taste like and your taste buds grow accustomed to their African substitutes.  You step on a nail, you take it out – c’est la vie.

No, the hard part I think isn’t all this stuff around, all the things on the outside, it’s that on the inside.  I’m going to real talk here for a second.  I’ve found that moving to Africa as a single person, a single female is…what’s the word…hard.  I know, moving to Africa as a married person with a family is hard too, obviously.  But the single missionaries plight is just a bit different.   I think there is a specific loneliness factor that is a little bit of a game changer; a weapon in Satan’s arsenal almost specially crafted just for us.   At the end of a long day, good or bad, an undercurrent thought line is kind of always present, probably more of a slight whisper from the enemy come to think of it, “I’m here alone.” 

And of course we are not.  God is always with us and all of that legitimate and lifesaving truth, but those times when you think “man this sucks,” it’s not because the internet is too slow in this country to stream Netflix, it’s that. 

I think a lot about my people.  My home team, if you will.  I know I’ve been richly blessed to have a home team comprised of family who have become my dearest friends and some of the dearest friends who have become family.   And on the days when weights of my heart are heavy, from loneliness to frustration, I become even more acutely aware that they are all 10,000 miles away.  And the hard seems harder.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m surrounded by amazing Americans and Zambians alike that serve as constant reminders that..well God is real.  That He will always be present in and through His people; He will reveal His love through them no matter where you are in the world.  I know I am not the easiest person to work with and live with, much less both, and they love me anyway.  But as I examine the last year and a half here through the post home/home team time-lens, I realize how much of my periods of weariness are rooted in the ache of those separations.

Maybe it being Easter time and all, I’ve been thinking about Christ and his time here on Earth, His tenure in a place that wasn’t Home, not by a long shot.  How many times must He looked up and been like, “really Father?  I mean I’m God too, so I get it, but yikes.”  Like times like the Garden of Gethsemane we know, probably/arguably the epitome of such queries, but how many other countless times did his inner thought narrative echo the same sentiment in less dire situations, asking God for there to be another way.  How often do I lift up similar requests.

Single. In His thirties.  Separated from His Father in a very foreign place. 

Jesus is our great sympathizer – um yeah, no joke.  I imagine He had trains of thought just like we do, reflecting on and analyzing situations, deciphering His feelings and opinions on them. And because He was human, I suspect must have internally articulated often how hard things were.  Because His life was really hard; much harder than mine.   But I think He, being God as well, understood far better, more pervasively than I do, that hard doesn’t equate bad.  Quite the opposite actually.  How synonymous does my heart and mind seem to view the two.  But not Him.  He knew the hardest things He was to endure, would yield the greatest reward. 

Hard caused Him to cry out to the Father, every time.  Hard needs to stir me to the same response. His hard times brought about such good things; shoot – they brought about miracles.  Hanging on the cross, bearing the weight of your sins and mine, nothing I will experience will ever be as hard as that.   He didn’t run from it though, but with arms outstretched, embraced the hard – and look what happened.  

The gospel happened.  

My salvation happened.  

My identity and my source of hope happened.    

Good gracious, I’m so thankful He knew the hard would bring about such good.  He walked through His life here with joy because His love for us, His love for His children far outweighed the hard.

And so as I enter into this next season in Zambia, a place of which there is so much, and so many whom I love, I choose faith in that truth.  Hard doesn’t mean bad.  And some other ones too.  Like I’m not alone, not even a little bit.  And that love truly does conquer all – it did at Calvary and it does now.