So here is a little update on kind of where I am after having made my decision about deferring for a year. Honestly, I feel good about my decision. I believe that it is the right thing for me to do and have received confirmation almost everyday in some form or another. The other side of that is that the fear of moving, of living somewhere new, of being without my friends and family, still really scares me. Sometimes to the point of wishing I had made the other decision and taken the other road.
I get all tangled up in the thoughts of hypotheticals and the fact that I don't have a job, place to live, steady income, people to live with or even community up there to help me sort it all out. However, I do know that these vines of self-doubt really entangle me for no purpose but to mutilate my self-esteem, faith in God and faith in His people. I am finding once again, as I did in high school that the road that God and his people have pointed me on is not the safe, secure, wide and well-lit path that I have chosen to avoid for a year; but rather, this is the narrow, winding path...the start of which is hard to find.
This is where the dedication comes in. I think about Romans 12, verses 1-2 (The very verse I taught my kids in Samoa and attempted to learn in Samoan). I think about how so many people in scripture were called to dedicate their paths to the Lord. To offer their lives, bodies, talents, loves, dreams, and everything to the Lord so that they would succeed as only God can allow them to. They were probably scared. They probably cried. They also wrestled with their decision and felt the tug of the Spirit within them a certain way like did and do.
It's definitely easy to justify your actions for doing something crazy by saying that the Spirit has led you to this decision or that. Religious people have been justifying all sorts of insanity for thousands of years. However, there really is something to the overwhelming and inviting peace that falls every time I take back my decision from the vines of doubt and fear and restore it to the rightful place under God's control.
In Proverbs, it talks about the birds and the plants and how God provides for them because He loves his creation. Henri Nouwen, in his writings about solitude to community to ministry talks about us, his children, as the beloved. He asks us to find peace and wholeness in him. Finally, my least favorite "justification of the insanity" scripture is in Philippians. I am not rotting away in a prison cell and I resent openly when people put this on the back of a sports teams shirt, but Paul tells us that the love and peace of God can help us through the toughest of situations. "I can do all things..." think about what Paul was saying when he made that claim. I think about my situation and there is no real persecution, only doubt.
I praise God for the ways that he has dispelled the fear and doubt in my mind the last couple of weeks. Crazy Christian girl who has no clue about real life or not... if you were me, you could not possibly deny the peace and understanding that's come with the decision to hand all of the stress and worry over to Him.
