I wrote this as a journal entry during my time in Ecuador this past week and was encouraged by several of my teammates to share it. I have been reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp lately, so the ideas within this entry are largely based on what I have been cultivating from her book. I hope you enjoy it.
January 6, 2014
"Who would have guessed that 3 years ago, sitting cross-legged in a cramped dorm room on the floor of a Colby double, that now, here, today I would be sitting in the back of a Nissan pickup truck in the pouring rain in Ecuador as we (this same group of women) drive down a mountain on our way home from cloud-forest zip-lining? Who would have guessed that this small group of incredible women would have impacted my life so much and that here today, I would be sitting in a living room in Ecuador with missionaries laughing, playing Balderdash, having spent the last week sharing the gospel with little children in Quito? Walking into a stuffy, crammed-up dorm room as a freshman, how could I ever imagine this?
This life I live is so beautiful. And it is so beautifully authored. I cannot find the words to express how grateful I am for this grace, this story, this growing into faith that is strong, communal, and real. A freshman Bible study that has grown into a group of 9 women pursuing mission and reveling in the love of their Maker. I could not have written a better story if I'd even tried.
Why do I so often try? I tinker with ideas of future, of expectations, so often and yet there isn't one iota of me that actually controls the magnificent for-His-glory-and-my-good story that God is unfolding. I am so glad, looking back, that God has so often told me "no", even when it was (and has been) some of the hardest expectations to break. Looking back on this past semester to one of the most painful "no's" yet, I see the work of what "eucharisteo" has been doing in my life. Don't you hear it? I am that child who was making mud-pies in the slums, wallowing in my own pity and deservedness, all the while forgetting and misunderstanding what is meant by a vacation at the beach.
God is good and He does give good gifts. Thank goodness He doesn't just give me what I want, but what I need. More of Him. More of His grace. Patience, sanctification, new desires, a new heart, a new spirit, a new life.
He is the Maker of all things new.
Why do I live so enamored with my own expectations? I disguise them as hopes and dreams, but really they are demands, selfish proclamations that to live really fully, I must have x, y, and z. Or when things don't go my way, when "misfortune" falls, I feel as if I have been cheated of something good. (It's really just in the word itself: "mis"/wrongly "fortune"/what I see as deserved well-being.)
I think of the time we've spent at the camp here in Ecuador and the two blonde-headed boys whose small hearts were so full of ingratitude and complaints already. At such a young age (and really are none of us that different) they have learned to whine and complain and gripe their way into their own desires. When mom doesn't give them the sweets or attention or toys they demand, they scream, cry, talk back, and disrespect the hand that feeds them, raises them, gives them life.
How easy it is for me to look at them and see the sin in their blackened little hearts, all the while forgetting that this spirit of ingratitude is rampant in my own heart as well. The disgust I felt listening to their complaints and crummy attitudes is really how I ought to feel toward myself when I recognize this "anti-eucharisteo" spirit raging in me.
When you are zip-lining through cloud-forests at 10,000 ft. of elevation, it's easy to be grateful. When you are loving 18 elementary Ecuadorian kids who shower you with hugs even when you are a stranger, it's easy to be grateful. When you stand on the edge of a mountainside in Quito and look down onto the grid of the city below, how can your heart be filled with anything but gratitude and praise?
But if God is good, what are you to do with the hard things? If God is always good, always working for our good, how do you reconcile the heartbreaks, the divorces, the deaths, the diseases, the pain that this world dishes out so freely? Is there gratitude to be found even in that?
I'm finding that the answer to that (even if sometimes blindly) is yes. God is good; God is sovereign even in the hurt, even in the heartache. We might not always see the "why" of the goodness in the hear and now, but when did God ever promise to answer our "why's"? He answered, is answering, our "who", and that is the only answer we will ever need.
Christ.
In one word the fullness of all God's mercies, graces, goodness, and promises is found. The name of Jesus Christ.
Sometimes we get a glimpse of the "why" through the "who", like when you are sitting in the rain in the back of a pickup truck in Ecuador and thinking back to the first time you met this crazy group of called women who have become your closest sisters. Sometimes you can see the change, the plan, the promise unfold, but not always, and never fully.
"Now we see through a mirror dimly, then face to face. Now we know in part, then we shall know fully, even as we have been fully known."
Don't you see the beauty of it? I am fully known. I don't have to understand because I am already fully understood! I don't have to know, because I am fully known. All I have to do is trust. Trust that I am being led there, trust that this dim mirror isn't a full revelation of the work being done in me. Someday I will see. Someday I will understand, but not today.
And I am ok with that.
I am ok with surrendering these flimsy expectations for the fullness of trust. It's a hearty trust, a strong unknowing, and that is because the trusting is in a Full-Knower. An all-powerful, GOOD Creator. A Director who connected freshman Bible study to Quito, Ecuador and is connecting moment-to-moment all these fleeting, seemingly random circumstances that I so often let rule me.
A bad day, a harsh word, a breakup, a depression are not equal to my God-concept unless I let them rule me. My filter should not be myself, my circumstances, my emotions, my own understanding. My filter must be Truth. Only then will I not be "tossed like the waves" by every tumultuous doctrine or event. When you are the filter for your own truth, the real Truth is distorted, but when the Truth is the filter for yourself, you can't help but find yourself changed by it (Him).
And as you are changed, you see it. I see it. Am seeing it. Am learning to look with new eyes. There's beauty all around. There's "eucharisteo" in everything. I'm grateful.
Thank you, God, for the "yes's" and the "no's", for the unconnected dots as well as the ones You choose to reveal. Help me walk by faith, to trust you daily with new graces, new beauties, new opportunities for seeing you. Amen."
Lovely!
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