Sparks of Light & Life

Six days from now, I will fly out of the gray everyday-ness of a snowy February and take a flying leap back - and forward - into the mountains of Ecuador. My friends Chris & Gretchen have immersed themselves in a small mountain community, partnering with and living alongside a church there, and I have the privilege of joining them for a week.

Only God knew - when He plucked me out of everything familiar and set me down in the midst of a foreign culture, people, and land - that 10 years later, He would send me back. Back to visit that place where my perspective shifted up in lasting ways. And forward, into what seems inexplicably like a new season of life, though its borders remain fuzzy & uncertain.

When I went to Ecuador the first time, I had no real knowledge of how my trip fit into God's overarching plan for my life. Or whether it made any significant ripple in His grand plan for the world. This time around, my foresight isn't much greater. I just know that I have friends there who are doing their best to be obedient to God's call, even though it doesn't make much sense sometimes. I am hoping that I can catch some of that courage, some of that reckless abandon, and even that respectful disregard for people's opinions that comes with choosing God's way over man's. And I feel, though I can't exactly explain why, that some new breath of Life is waiting.

Taking risks isn't exactly a pattern for me. I think that's why, when I do scrounge up the courage to take one, it makes such a lasting impact. So here I go ... my first solo international flight, into a community a few hundred yards below where witch doctors make their sacrifices, coming face to face with the darkness within and without ... all in the hope of discovering the overwhelming Light breaking into both places.

At the moment, I am feeling very unprepared for this new adventure, both practially and spiritually. The momentum of the semester has left little free time & energy for planning, packing, or praying. Physical & emotional exhaustion has settled over me like a cloud, but that stubborn spark of hope refuses to be smothered.

For some unaccountable reason of His own, God has gifted me with Life, and Light, and Love. And these are what I carry with me - before me, behind me, within me. I'm not sure how they'll show up in this all-but-forgotten mountain village on the underside of the world, but I'm going in with eyes wide open, ready to see how they'll appear, how they'll bless the precious ones I'll meet, how they'll be strengthened and enriched for the return trip. And for the Life beyond ...

Still Looking Up

It's funny how God holds us up when we don't even realize we need to ask Him to...

I'm not feeling very eloquent tonight -- it's the end of a long day, and a long week, or three long weeks -- but I was just thinking about why I started this blog in the first place.

When I was a sophomore in college, I stepped out of the ordinary to spend three months studying & traveling in Ecuador. It was a collection of firsts: my first time on a plane, first time out of the country, first time being so far from home, for such a long time.

I was completely out of my element, both exhilarated and terrified. And because of it, I spent those three months coming to rely on God in a way I'd never realized I needed to before.

In the weeks before my team left on our trip, our college's chapel band had introduced a chorus based on Psalm 121. Adrift in Ecuador, I spent the balance of the semester anchoring my eyes on the Andes and singing that song to myself ...

I lift my eyes up to the mountains
Where does my help come from?
My help comes from You,
Maker of Heaven, Creator of the Earth
Oh, how I need You, Lord!
You are my only hope,
You're my only prayer.
So I will wait for You
To come and rescue me,
Come and bring me life...

The simple reality behind that Psalm -- that whatever I faced, no matter how large it loomed, God was bigger -- got me through a challenging 3 months in a foreign country. Several years later, when I moved away to Denver, Colorado for grad school, that same perspective -- reinforced this time by the breath-catching Rockies -- kept me going when I wanted to quit. Kept me believing when I wanted to give up. Kept me, my problems, the world, and God, all in proper perspective.

Planted now in northern Indiana, there are no visible mountains to remind me of the God behind them. But I have only to close my eyes to see either familiar mountain range firmly fixed in my memory. And, because it became such habit -- in the precious years I lived in the mountains' shadow -- to look up at them in midst of the dirt & sweat struggle of daily life, the practice remains with me still. Only now, it is the eyes of my heart I'm lifting-- up to the rugged beauty of the mountains, and beyond them, to the God who made us both them, and me. He walked with me through each step, each season, each shift of dark & light then ... I trust Him to do so again.

That's why I'm writing here: for perspective. To remind myself -- and anyone who happens to be reading along -- to look up. There is more to life than what can be seen. Yet sometimes, God favors us with a glimpse beyond the veil to another country that lies beyond. Countless times I believe I've almost caught sight of it ... and then it's gone. But no matter how dark it gets, or how brief and distant the glimpses, I keep watching. And waiting. And I keep looking up.

Of Fear and Fetters

Old, familiar demons creep close, pointing bloody fingers and whispering accusations of shame & doubt.

God, how I long to leave this behind! But to do so, I must walk through a wall of fire that looms up just as fearfully.

Will I trust You? Will I believe enough in Your love and wisdom to take Your hand and let You lead me through the flames?

Or will I cower in fear on this side of the Jordan, within sight of the Promised Land, but never able to set my foot there?

Oh God, far be it from me to stay! Yet how will I ever find the courage to leave?

Help me, Father! My spirit is willing - longing! - but my cowardly flesh pulls back.

"So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched one I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" ~Romans 7:21-25

Never more than now have I been so aware of this war! Never more desirous - or reluctant - to see the final victory.

There is something dark & powerful waging war over my soul, Lord. It's had me in its clutches so long I fear to rouse & anger it further, anxious to avoid greater torment. Yet I am uncomfortably aware that the demon has already been stirred - never silent, that one, its wrath is relentless.

Do I trust You to protect me?

I know I cannot emerge from this unscathed - it's already too late for that. Yet I still pull back in this vain attempt to protect myself. I am the wounded animal caught in a trap that bites and scratches at the hand of its Rescuer. I am, by my own stubborness and failure to trust, making my deliverance harder. But I don't know how to relax and let You lead. I am so tightly wound, so firmly wrapped in my own sin & folly, yet I cling pitifully to these dirty rags.

Forgive me, Lord! Open my eyes that I would truly see the tenderness of Your conviction.

Here Again ... For the First Time

I won’t look any different when you see me tomorrow. But I’ll feel different. And, by God’s grace, I’ll be different – just a little bit, at least.

Why the difference? Well …

I just got out of an intense meeting with a group of ladies who love me – love me enough to tell me the truth. I’ve been slacking, I’ve been struggling, and they saw it. And they sat me down, and they helped me to see it. Everything they said rang true – I have been weak in these areas. I have let things slide. And though I was aware of these things in a general kind of way, I didn’t stop to consider how I was letting down individuals, or my community. I sort of hoped a vague “I’m not really good at this” or “after all, nobody’s perfect” would cover it.

But it didn’t last year, when a team of three girls challenged me to step it up. And it doesn’t this year, when a team of six had the courage to confront.

The issues in both conversations were very similar. And they all have their roots in my greatest areas of weakness, the sins & strongholds I struggle with the most. No surprises there, right? Especially not for those of you who have known me – or my writing – for very long. It won’t surprise you, for example, that I’ve been pulling back inside myself and keeping others at a distance. Or that I’ve been focusing more on tasks than on people.

So really, a whole year later, I’m still making the same mistakes?

Yup.

And yet, they’re not quite the same. I heard this great illustration once that has been such an encouragement to me. Sometimes it seems like we’re just going in circles, covering the same ground, banging our heads against the same walls, fighting the same battles, over and over and never getting anywhere. But if our hearts are pliable to God’s handiwork, it’s more like we’re traveling upward on a spiral staircase. Sure, as we go around, we’re seeing some of the same scenery, but we see it from a different perspective. Each time we circle around back to it, we’ve climbed higher; we have a better handle on how the small piece fits into the whole.

The right perspective is vital.

I could choose to feel pretty miserable right now. After all, I had a lot of hard stuff piled on me tonight. And considering where I was last year at this time, it could really seem like I’ve made pretty much no progress at all.

But consider this view ...

I can be thankful that my team had the courage to bring these issues directly to my attention, rather than silently nursing their frustrations. I can be glad that they had such good, practical suggestions for how I can improve. I can celebrate that they truly want me to be a more vital part of their community. I can recognize this as God's grace, bringing further dross to the top so He can skim it off, refining my life into a purer reflection of Himself. I can realize that, even though it seems like the same failings repeating themselves, it’s really not. I am different. Even in the way God has enabled me to receive this correction – believe me, it’s so much better than the last time I was here!

I’ll admit, considering changes like the kind I need to make – even if only the ones my team brought up tonight – is pretty overwhelming. But I have such a great support system, in all different spheres of my life. And I have a God who’s so infinitely patient with me, so lovingly willing to open my eyes to more – more of who I truly am, and more of who I can become. More of who He has made me to be.

Even though I would love to go to bed tonight and wake up tomorrow to find myself completely transformed, I know it doesn’t happen that way. It’s going to take countless small, determined, consistent steps before any significant change can be noted. But the change is happening; these steps are taking me somewhere. Because I am definitely not the same person now that I was when I woke up this morning. I may look the same. But I am seeing things a whole lot differently!

Travelogue, Page 1

   What if there was something more? Something beyond life-as-usual, which isn’t really life at all? Wouldn’t you long for it? Wouldn’t you throw off everything holding you back and run to embrace it? Wouldn’t I? Despite the fear, the cost, the constraints of convention?

   I have lived a silent life, a hidden life, a safe and controlled and nearly risk-free life for as long as I’ve known myself, and probably before. I am the prolific author of dozens of private journals, pages of academic essays, and a wealth of aborted writing projects. Writing, for me, has been a release, an outlet. I am my truest self on the page; it is there – and so far, only there – that I am free to discover and live out the person I am meant to be. Yet, until now, there has only been One entrusted with these fears and fancies that flow, unedited, from the springs deep within. Between me and the rest of the world lies a thin sheet of ice. I can see and be seen, while remaining separate. And, as I’ve long convinced myself, protected.

But ice, even at the height of its frigid beauty,                                                                        

doesn’t nurture life – it destroys. 

   
It seems such a small thing, for one who has secretly nurtured grandiose dreams of changing the world, to simply start a blog. And yet, for me, it is so much more than that. This is to be a great experiment in trusting the God I love, the One who has given all to me. Writing, I have recognized, is one of His sacred gifts in my life. With this blog, in this simple exercise of pondering and writing and sharing, I choose to give that gift back to Him, by giving it to the world. What He does with it – large or small – is up to Him; I will delight in the joyful rewards of obedience.


   To begin the experiment, then, here is an excerpt from my journal of prayers …


***


   God, You have given me a gift of life. It bubbles up in gushes and trickles, yet finding no outlet, it threatens to stagnate, evaporate. But the sheet of ice is cracking, Lord, I feel it. The ice is weakening, melting – it will soon give way – and then the life will burst forth, with nothing to contain it.

   God, I feel it – the life is pulsing inside me. It quickens and presses and stirs. My very limbs quiver, aching to run, to leap, to dance. Energy and passion and vitality stir, longing for release, pushing for change, for transformation, calling for hope and healing that is a very form of life from the dead. 


   Father, You are real, You are true. You are love and life, health and hope and happiness. Nothing lives beyond You, God. And so many of us live a half-life, because we have not fully realized or embraced You.


   Oh, God! That hope is there, I know it – that hope is You. But somehow, so many of us have gotten lost in the looking – we haven’t really seen. Open our eyes, God. Open our spirits to You. Release the bands of ice and iron that entrap and entomb us, constricting the very flow of our hearts’ blood. Release us that our hearts may expand, that our lungs may draw a full, fresh breath – maybe the first one of our lives. 


   God, Your light, Your life, Your living water – Your very Son and Spirit are stirring within me. “Wake,” they whisper; “Wake!” they call. Arise, oh sleeper; wake from the dead, and Christ will shine on you!


   Yes, Lord! I wake. I live, I breathe, I rejoice. I blink my eyes to clear my vision, seeing as if for the first time. Your voice to my ear is sweet and precious, almost achingly so, and Your touch, wondrous beyond all I’ve ever known.


   I am Yours! My spirit cries. I am knowing, I am believing, I am trusting You like never before.


   Here begins a journey, Lord, a new adventure. My passport has arrived, and I am setting out to new lands, ground I’ve never traveled, sights I’ve never seen…


***


   This blog is not the journey; it is but the travelogue. It will reflect where I’ve been, describe where I am, illustrate where I hope to go. I hope it will inspire some to set out on similar journeys; others, to reflect on travels already in progress. Always, comments and questions from fellow travelers will be welcome, that we may gain insight, encouragement, correction, and strength along the Way.


   Blessings to you, my friends old and new, and as you go, keep looking up!

ice flower
Originally uploaded by lalla2006