Goodbyes and Hellos

My last hike in CO (Reservoir Trail). A friendly bear took this picture while I posed.

“Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply..”  Romans  12:9-10 (The Message)

For five weeks I’ve eaten three meals a day together, worshipped, prayed, played, and trained for a future in missions with a group of about 45 people and their children. I think my experience in Colorado has been a small taste of what the early church must have been experiencing when Acts 2:46 says  “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.”

My roommate Jenn (a nurse practitioner heading to Ethiopia)

 I personally thrive on large doses of privacy and solitude but it surprised me how much of me cried out “I was made for this!” when it came to living communally. It’s interesting  to me that when I didn’t have my own car or even my own room, the new “normal” became feeding  other people’s children, asking for and sharing whatever was needed (a ride, peanut butter, cold medication), and doing activities in groups (“I’m going to Walmart at noon and I’ve got three more spots in the car!”). 
The painful side of being tightly woven into this community of people was saying our goodbyes and parting ways. Some will be my future neighbors (Kenya, South Sudan, and Rwanda) and I hope to see them when I’ll have to periodically cross the Ugandan borders to get my visa renewed. For most of these precious people though, I don’t expect to see them again until we cross the “border” of our earthly lives and say our hellos in Heaven.  That fact makes me even more grateful for one of the last and hardest lessons in our training: “Goodbyes and Hellos”. 

On the day of that session, there wasn’t a dry eye in that training room as we all took turns sharing who we would be saying goodbye to at home in the near future. The thrust of the training was that healthy goodbyes prepare us to risk offering our hearts anew. You can’t numb your heart from pain and still feel true joy; happiness and grief are inexplicably bound together.  With that in mind, I felt challenged to say a real goodbye to my brothers and sisters that I had spent more than a month with. I think before that I would have been tempted to smile big and just say “see you later!”, making light the of the loss of that relationship that God had built.

My hardest goodbye was to a young couple and their two preschool children that will be heading to Japan in the next week. We had a special connection since the first day and I literally became a part of their family during our time together.  It made us laugh that their toddler daughter would yell “Doy!!” (she’s still getting her J’s) from across the room every time she saw me. We started dreading our goodbye a few days before we knew it had to happen and kept saying to each other half-jokingly “I’m not ready yet”. That final day we had together we asked God for His hand of blessing on each other and couldn’t hold back the tears.  We wholeheartedly committed each other to the Lord and grieved the loss that we might not see each other again on this earth.  I rode away in the van to the airport sad, but with a clean feeling of release.

An hour and a half later I was sitting at my gate waiting for my flight to board when I heard “Joy!!” . My friends had just arrived to wait for their flight, sitting down just one gate away from mine.  I rushed over and we hugged and laughed over the fact that we had just literally cried our eyes out over our goodbye. God in His sense of humor and sweetness decided to give us another hello and another goodbye. We called our second parting our “happy goodbye” since the last one had been so thorough. 
I don’t know why the Lord would have me to share all this except that there might be some people reading this that need the release of a healthy goodbye. Maybe it’s to a person or maybe it’s to a season of life or something you previously enjoyed. I’m not an expert in this, but I pray you’re able to grieve that loss honestly before the Lord and acknowledge that it might not come back into your life again. I think only then can we really say an authentic “hello” to the new things God is bringing into our life. 

“ See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”   Isaiah 43:19

 

The Pursuit

 “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If one were to give all the wealth of one’s house for love, it would be utterly scorned.” Song of Solomon 8:6-7

Have you ever been in a place in your life where you sensed the Lord intently pursuing you? He’s been a very real husband to me for almost three years, but lately I’ve felt His gaze on me stronger than I can remember.  A part of me relishes it (deep down I need to be claimed and wanted), and a part of me squirms under His intensity.  

I feel led today to share some very personal snippets of what it looks like in my every day, ordinary life. The ways He’s seeking me in this season may be very different from the way He’s seeking you out. My hope is that maybe we’ll all be a little more aware of His pursuit, and not ignore it or resist it.

In submitting future plans to Him.

Jesus has been inwardly nudging me when my thoughts about the future drift  into “independent auto pilot”. My thought life is just a reflection of what’s going on in my heart; a lack of submission and dependence on Him. He’s given me some concrete instructions to follow for my future (this training I’m a part right now in Colorado is one example), but that doesn’t give me license to run out and try and “make it happen” apart from Him. When someone offers you space under their umbrella in a storm, you don’t run as fast as you can and hope they keep up. I need to be keeping pace with the umbrella-holder, my covering, Jesus Christ.  Jesus gives us the picture of how helpless and dried up we are apart from Him. Try reading this out loud with your name inserted into every in place He says “you”.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in Me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers..”   John 15:5-6

In the area of selfish expectations.

 One of the dangers of not having any dependents or built-in accountability in this season of life is that  I’m prone to turning, as one author puts it, “slavishly inward”.  I confess  that as a single lady without children  it’s easy for me to just think about myself, my own comfort, my own needs. “My, my, my”.  Ugh.  The Lord is so gracious though, and He wisely inserts people into my life to pour into and interact with. For instance, the website for this training program promised private rooms. “Great!”, I thought to myself, “Five beautiful weeks to hole up with the Lord in privacy”.  Three hours after arriving, someone knocks on my door, and in walks my roommate! Inwardly sighing, I gathered up my shattered expectations of solitude and made room in the closet. Now I can’t imagine it any differently. This young woman is hand-wrapped beautiful gift I don’t deserve. The Lord wisely knew I needed a sister to help me process this mission journey. It doesn’t do me any harm to remember how to share a bathroom sink either!  Thank You, Jesus, for not listening to my selfish preferences. 

In treating brothers like brothers.

I’m not going to lie; I’m surrounded here by attractive, godly, mission-minded single men. Now before some of you ladies decide to buy a plane ticket and join me here, I’d like to say that it often makes me want to press the “eject button” and get out of here. I think you’ll agree that dealing well with the opposite sex is spiritually and emotionally complicated. God has made it clear to me that these are my brothers and my heart attitude and interactions need to line up with that. So what does guarding my heart and their heart look like?  It means being strategic and prayerful about what table I sit down to eat at for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It means making sure there’s a nice buffer (like another sister or a married couple with a whole gaggle of kids) in every interaction. I want to treat them like their future wife is standing right beside them. And that’s not just for the single guys; the married ones need covering too. I don’t strike up conversations that don’t include their wives and I keep that dear lady as a shield between us. As a whole, it means I bring my eye contact, conversation, manner of dress, and heart intentions before the Lord frequently. It’s not about coldly avoiding or being rude (which seems easier to me), but making sure their heart is safe and so is mine. Keep their dignity and being a gracious “wall.”

“If she is a wall, we will build towers of silver on her. If she is a door, we will enclose her with panels of cedar.”  Song of Solomon 8:9

Are we a “wall” or a “door”?  If you read this scripture in context, it’s a frank conversation some older brothers are having about how they will protect their young sister until her marriage. They want to guard her purity, and they plan to do that in various ways according to the state of her heart. If she’s trustworthy and guards her heart, they want to honor and celebrate that. That quality is beautiful it’s pictured by draping her with silver. If she’s an “open door” emotionally, inviting anyone to come in and meet her needs (on any level), they know they’ll have to protect her more forcefully. Maybe some days we’ll go between being a wall and a door emotionally. I would rather the Lord have me molded into a gracious, yet firm wall that honors Him and my brothers in Christ. Not emotionally shutting down, but allowing Him to shield me and seal in what’s precious.

“..take me away with you—let us hurry! Let the king bring me into his chambers.”                               Song of Solomon 1:4

Dear Lord, please make us aware of Your unique pursuit of our hearts. Help us not to push You away or resist You. Make us a pure bride in Christ and draw us deep into Your chambers! Our life, love, and freedom are only found in intimacy with You. In Jesus Name, Amen.