Month: February 2020

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Hope Is A Sticky Wicket

With almost zero segue from the topic we had been discussing breezily moments before, I wrote that “I realize the application site has changed and now shows the waiting list, and therefore I assume that means the trip is full, so I just wanted to thank you for considering my application, and maybe next year will be my “next right thing” in God’s plan.” I hit send and burst into tears.

I’ve realized the last week or so that while I am absolutely content with a ‘no’ if that is the best plan and is how God wants to roll on this, I am having less success letting go of the desire to get a ‘yes’. To see that email in my inbox that invites me to tag along merrily across an ocean. I have realized that I wanted this trip even more than I thought I did. I’ve held it lightly in my mind, but my heart seems to have jumped overboard and headed right for the sirens. I cannot convince my heart not to hope. I am in the situation of being able to let God decide this for me, and not feeling a desire to push for it, manipulate to try and make it happen, yet at the SAME time having this deep desire in my heart that I am in mourning for and trying to lay down, while it seems to want to keep getting back up out of the grave and follow me home.

Hope is dastardly if we don’t know how to handle it. It’s terrifying if we can’t (spoiler: we never can) see the future or the timing or the reasons why that lie in front of us. All I can hope in is this, that God knows exactly what and when He’s doing, and He’s not going to allow me a single tear drop that is not absolutely necessary. For now, I ache and I’m restless and I don’t know what to want or what to do with what I want.

We can be completely convinced that God “works all things together for good, to them that love Him and are called according to His purposes”. (Romans 8:28) and that He gives good gifts to His children, and withholds nothing that is for their good and His glory. The problem is when the outcome of our desires could go either way, that’s where faith comes in and our reasoning has to sit back and sigh and wait, and trust that we don’t know exactly what that working out or those good gifts actually look like, even though we feel like we do.

So I will continue to hold this heaviness, this call to still hope despite the answer looking like an almost definite no, and continue to also daily give the desire and confusion and ‘pending-ness’ to Him to hold and to use, and see what happens.

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The Ache & Joy of “Pending”

My email inbox has never been refreshed so many times in one day. Phone calls that turn out to be from telemarketers seem unusually cruel this morning. I keep searching for hints on Instagram. I’m in that glorious yet excruciating state of anticipation, waiting to hear if I’m going to be going on a specific trip this year or not.

I applied after much deliberation, knowing based on previous year’s participants that I’m sadly outclassed in the achievements department, and knowing that if I go, I want it to be because it’s part of God’s plan and in His timing, not because I’ve forced it or idolized it. If I don’t go, my year will still be rich, full of opportunities and wonderful people and events. I’m content with God using the application alone just to teach me something, and I’m ok if the choice to step out in faith and apply ends up being the only part of my story involving this trip. More importantly, if I do go, I have to allow the people and trip to be what it will be and take it as it comes, and not build up expectation or set myself up for disappointment if it doesn’t go as smoothly as I’d hope.

Life-changing is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. If you want to go down the butterfly effect-esque rabbit trail, choosing a breakfast cereal for the day is life-changing. In the greater scope, certain events certainly have the potential to change our life’s course in a relatively short amount of time. In my own experience, however, even the grand dramatic moments have a trail of tiny decisions and events and thoughts and influences lingering behind them, like steps in dewy grass, subtle but weighty. No “life-changing” moments happen without weeks of the ordinary, the mundane, the seemingly small decisions, the “chance” encounters, the influences we allow daily.

So if this one desire, that I believe and pray is one God has placed in my heart, comes to fruition, it will not be “life-changing” in the sense that something unexpected will be realized or decided on this trip. It will simply be another Ebenezer stone that God can etch into my memory to mark a high point in a string of His guiding influences and steps, one of a million inches between the womb and becoming the perfect image of a holy God, loving perfectly and abiding constantly with Him in eternity. If right now the answer to this desire is a no, I can trust that there is a good reason. That the no might be just for this season. The no might be because otherwise I will have to turn down a different plan that will be better for my own abiding. I have to trust that the one who says no, does not deny us any good and perfect gifts, so if it’s a no, it wasn’t for my good and it wasn’t the perfect timing needed. And if this trains me to realize that truth a bit more? It’s worth my perception of loss.

He can be trusted with the desires of our heart. If we are abiding in Him, He’s the one putting them there. We can pray for wisdom for what to do with them, how to hold them lightly. A good desire can be turned bad simply by holding onto it and seeking it too fiercely. I know a lot of current cultures says ‘don’t let anything come between you and what you want’ but I think that’s immature and unbalanced and short-sighted. It just creates fear, dissatisfaction, exhaustion. I want the opposite. I want the “yoke (that) is easy and (His) burden (that) is light” (Matthew 11).