It's been a while since I've written anything, and, to be honest, it's been a combination of a hectic lifestyle and a smidge of laziness. So many thoughts and life happenings have occurred that I haven't taken the time to sit down and write any of the down for my somewhat limited, but existent, online audience.
A lot of you know I went to India in January, and for those of you who don't, now you do. I went with a group of fellow students from my school, Charis Bible College, to minister to people in Chennai, India. It was an experience which will last with me for the rest of my life. This trip showed me a lot of things, one of them being that I LOVE going OUT.
Another thing it did for me was be one of the turning points which is helping to heal a past wound, one which has had more ripples on my life than I realized.
When I came home from Uganda about three and a half years ago, I was a defeated soldier--defeated by my own mind. I had been humbled, shown some darker areas of my heart, had some beautiful lessons, and, in my mind, seen that I may have been completely off the mark with what my dream was supposed to be. You see, Africa had been on my heart and in my bones for years--since I was seventeen, actually--as well as many other nations, but Africa was my first love, if you will. So, when I came home a supposed failure, I couldn't see how I had ever been right about what I wanted to do with my life. I thought I was crazy and had so royally missed it when it came to what God wanted me to do with my life. Why do I love Africa so much if I'm not cut out to be a missionary? Why did I ever want to be a missionary? I am so stupid...how could I be so stupid?
These were some of my thoughts upon my return to the States.
To be perfectly honest, I can't say for certain that I ever recovered from that experience. That summer is not one I will talk about easily; it monumentally impacted my life in both good and bad ways. In the time since returning, I have worked my way through so much of it, been able to positively apply a lot of what I had learned there, hashed out what was good and what I could just do away with, and I have regained a good image of myself, though a somewhat different on from when I first began this journey at the Ranch so many years ago now. What I have yet to recover from, though, was the death of my dreams.
When I went to Africa, I dealt with a lot of stuff I wasn't prepared for, including the paralyzing fear of dying in a foreign country, as well as just the fact that missions work is a little harder on your heart than people like to tell you it is. So, after my "failure" there, along with many hard lessons--although ultimately very good and impacting lessons that I needed--I shelved my dreams indefinitely, thinking I was incapable of being in charge of such precious things.
Going to India, however, has changed this.
A number of years ago, God asked me to give up my desires so His could invade. What I have learned since then is that, once I surrendered to Him completely, He would give me back my dreams and desires because my desires were always good, but the motive behind them was not. Not for what He had planned for my life, anyway--which is much, much better than what I could ever plan.
After I did that, I saw visions of things I could never do on my own--beautiful, adventurous things. However, I misinterpreted a thing or two, as we sometimes do, and though I got "back on track" after those things, a journey usually has a few more twists, turns, trips, or stumbles than we'd care to admit usually.
When I left Spring Arbor and came to Colorado, God started talking to me about dreams--my dreams. Long story short, I am dreaming again, almost two years later. I was so afraid of my dreams and afraid of myself being in charge of them. The wonderful thing about the dreams God gives you, though, is that ultimately He's the one who is in charge of them. I want to go back to India and Uganda; God has been showing me things about these countries and what I will do, as well as a few other things.
When I came home from India, the wife of one of my teammates shared with me that while we were gone a bunch of people were praying for us. One of those people had a word from God for me saying, "The Lord will restore the years the locusts ate away." I think He's doing that right now, and has been since I moved out here.
I'm not afraid of dreaming anymore. Are you? What's your dream? Will you share it with me?
p.s. I will share more about India and possibly my experience in Uganda at a later time. God is such a good friend!
Right. On.
ReplyDeleteGod has been restoring my dreams for a little over a year now: dreams I thought I had to throw away for good after giving them to Him. Colorado is a part of that. My life goal was to become a paleontologist and live out West in the mountains, but my reasons were entirely selfish. When I gave that to God upon going to Spring Arbor, I spent the next four years wondering what I was going to do with my life and what God wanted me to do. I thought I had to abandon all my dreams completely...in a sense, that's true, but I took at as a total denial of doing something that I wanted to do because I thought my dreams can only be selfish and completely incompatible with God's plan for my life. That's silly, but no one ever told me so.
Now God is showing me that He put those dreams in my heart Himself; He wanted to be the reason that I pursued them, though.
I am definitely NOT afraid of dreaming anymore. I know that God has my back, and wants me to glorify Him with my dreams. Now I'm excited to dream big!