The Journey That Has Brought Me Here...

I am just beginning my journey.

I realize, as I sit here a month away from 27, that I’m no spring chicken. I look young, but I have an old soul. There have been times when I felt much older than my age and times when age was as foreign a concept as time itself.

I have been called out on saying that age is just a number by people who just don’t get it—but for me, it really is. I have found, the older I have gotten, the more I can relate to just about anyone. The women I hung out with a year ago when I was working as a first grade teacher were all older women: I enjoyed their wisdom, but most of all I loved their spunky, hilarious personalities and the ways we could laugh through anything. Currently, most of my closest friends are my age—but it’s only because they’re the ones I went to college with. In this last season all my friends were younger than me, sometimes by eight years. Two of my best friends from that time, more like sisters, were eighteen when we started. I could have cared less how old they were—I loved being with them! We had fun!

It doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered!

I find that experience—what we’ve been through—and the heart—how we let our experiences shape, change and develop us and what we choose to care for—are all much more important indicators of who a person is. I know—beyond a doubt—that God gave me more years before I started stepping into this crazy life called missions because I had a lot to work through: things that would have been ugly on the mission field. He kept me back—even though I longed to and even fought to move forward. He was faithful to block me, even when it caused me pain, from those things that were not right at the present time, in order to give me something grand at the right time. It was right in me to have that desire, but without the timing…you have nothing. He’s taught me that, over and over, in so many areas of my life.

It’s this thing called ‘holiness’ isn’t it? I have become quite obsessed—no, it’s just come more and more to the forefront for me, just how important this little word is, with all its implications. Holiness invites you to believe in the other, to see the world through another’s lens and believe that what He says is true and good for you. Holiness holds within itself an element of timing: of doing things fittingly, in the right time and place. In trusting the timing of another, holiness invites you beyond yourself into the unknown, the other, to trust what you cannot see so that you can move forward fully. To believe and walk in holiness means to abdicate all other gods who would take the throne of your heart so that you may see clearly and move forward when the Father calls you.

It’s easy to let go of holiness. I was so close to doing it this last season, only seconds and words barely unspoken away from pushing into what was not mine yet. I had to abdicate—and the loss felt just like that, such a loss—but I can see clearly now.

I see where I am headed and the work that the Lord has done to get me here—to this Promised Land. All of my broken, trying years created this refining and hope in me that go beyond human expectation. They created in me resilience, an ability to look beyond present pain into what is coming, the gift of the future. I know how to endure loss, criticism and judgment from others in a way that honors those around me and keeps me moving forward. In the middle of the arena, with the fight going on all around, I have learned to stand still and hear my Father’s voice—to live and move from that perspective and not what my natural ears and eyes perceive.  I have learned, especially in this last season, that love is made to be audible, shared, and that the love of the Father makes all worthy. I have learned to let love grow in me, so that others may be known and seen and comforted. I have learned to speak when it may be unpopular and that my voice is worth being known and heard.

And in all this, I am very much still learning and in process—but He sees gold in me. He put it there. This last season was the last of digging out the choking weeds and dust of death so that life, true life from the Father of life, could be found in me. I am becoming—always in process—a piece of heaven on earth, where the dwelling place of God has been made with man.

Heaven on earth…

It’s strange, to live in the yet and the not yet: we spent a whole year while I was in college talking through this concept in my school’s chapel. Our campus pastor, Travis Osborne, took apart the Kingdom of God, its implications and all that Jesus and the rest of the Bible said about it—and in the end, we were left with “it’s-here-but-not-yet”. Tension…

Tension…

We all live in the tension, in many ways. So much of it is earthly, full of unfulfilled longing: “I want healing…, I want a child…, I want a new Mercedes…, I want that perfect job…,” You can be centered on your earthly tensions for the rest of your life and find that nothing else matters, because you can’t even think of anything else anymore: you’re so consumed with what you don’t have. It’s a fruitless pursuit: letting earthly tension take you over.

The Kingdom of God is not like that. It’s the place of tension, but it’s the best kind, the kind that brings life. When your life is centered around this Kingdom, all the rest comes to you as a matter of course, just part of the ride as you gaze at Him. Kingdom living—which is others centered—accidentally on purpose propels you forward into all you ever dreamed of because you have chosen to live for the King and He has chosen—and is now able to, because of your relinquishment—to take care of all that concerns you. You live with such a different hope and focus from this place: you know that the Lord is coming and your life is about building into His kingdom, even if you can’t see it yet. It’s a tension that gives life!

Here’s how it works: as you become more and more obsessed with this Kingdom, giving up more and more of what you thought was your real life to be a part of it (and this could look different in every life, as each of us has different struggles and dreams that we must relinquish control of) as you make this choice, it changes you. The further in you get, the more it will cost you: but, if you let it, the refining will bring you further into all He created you to be. Sure, you lost your car and you’re still single, but wowie! do you know how to love on and connect with people who you thought were so different from you! As He asks for more of who you are and who you thought you would be—often a very painful process--you are able to walk forward fully into all He has for you. In all your choices to trust His holiness and timing, you have created a place where you are able to behold Him truly and in that place, you see yourself truly and recognize that nothing holds you back from fully walking out the life He promised you. As you encountered the tension—and let it change you—all of a sudden it created in you what He had wanted there all along—and isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it great to be one of His own?

Tension is a part of life. We will never escape it: but when we choose to embrace the Kingdom of God as our own, the tension allows beauty to be found in us. A musical instrument will not function without tension. Any good story must have its share of tension to be worth being told. All the good love stories, dramas, thrillers—all accept and are able to move forward because of and in tension. You can run from it—or embrace it, allowing it to do the work in you.

I love the tension of knowing that my King is coming and yet not being able to see Him yet. I love—although I also feel the pain of—the various places in my life that are living in tension: marriage, ministry to Haiti, going back to Ireland. It is in the tension that life is created and holiness is felt: because at the right time, with the right amount of disappointment and hope, beauty and pain, suffering and glory, our lives on earth are being built. And yet, we are more: we are part of a Kingdom that goes on eternally. This life—the one you’re living—matters more than you have ever given it credit for. And you, who you are right now, the choices you are making, affect generations to come. So though you may have tension—hurts and worries that won’t leave you alone, struggles that seem to go on and on—know that these are part of a beautiful story that, if you chose to let your Creator in to co-create with you, will show Him and His glory off in the end.

1 Peter 1:6-9 says it best: “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls.”

No matter what state your life is in, I guarantee He wants it—to show off Himself. And I guarantee that when you are fully given over to Him, He will make beauty out of your pain and allow your story of redemption and hope—Jesus in His Kingdom at work—to shatter the lies of the enemy in other people. He loves to take what the enemy meant for evil and fill it to overflowing with good—and He’s powerful enough to do it, every time. You are not beyond redeeming, beyond Hope because we all know: Resurrection is here. It’s not a concept to be grasped, but a life to be lived, fully out of Him, in whatever broken places you have to offer.

The Kingdom has come—and is coming. Enjoy that tension with Him. It’s a beautiful story.

As for me, my journey, just beginning, is leading me to Northern Ireland for the next few years. A grace to my parents (sending out your single daughter isn't easy) and a delight to me: I will be working with students just like me as well as locals, bringing all forward into deeper encounters with the Lord and His radiant Kingdom. The people who were missionaries all over the world now need missionaries of their own: and I am delighted to be part of their journey! Pray for me!