We Are Going Forward

About a year and a half ago I shared a link to Facebook, six months later I received a text saying “Hey, can you just tweak that a bit and send it to me so I can post it on our site?” “Of course,” I said. And I sent her the link. And somehow, somewhere in there, that post got published in a magazine a few weeks ago and landed in my great grandmothers lap, all the way up in North Carolina, this Thanksgiving. But my family and I were in Florida, so we had no idea.

That post was about my trip to Honduras that summer and all of the things I learned there, the people I’d met and loved there.

About a week ago I received an email from the man we worked with in the school when we went, saying, “ This years senior class graduate Saturday December 5th, and we’d like for the sponsors to be there, all in country expenses paid for.”

I called my mom crying, and made her look through the pictures with me.

And we had lots of conversations over the weekend, and I don’t say this with any bitterness in my heart at all, but with gratefulness: they told me no. In my room with the lights off the night before we left for Florida, and I wept for all the hopes that I’d had. I lay out on our balcony with my quilt wrapped around me and I had the most real moments with God that I’d had in a while, a good long while. The kind of ugly crying where you don’t even care that you resemble Gollum in those moments because your heart is open and hurting.

The first thing my mom told me when I woke up the next day was “ We might have a free flight.”

And I slept almost the whole way to Florida.

Then Thanksgiving my great grandmother called us, and she mentioned an article I’d written being in the newspaper. I didn’t believe her until she started reading back my words to me, telling me the story about the boy that I sat next to in church, who later became my sponsor child. It came unexpectedly and at the perfect time. Because later that day after more crying and more praying and more heart to hearts, we found tickets almost $300 less than they had been two days before. And there’s the beauty in it all, the stirring of God moving in Hid perfect timing. So yesterday at 3:30am my mom and I woke up and boarded a plane to fly to Honduras.

Christmas came early this year for me, and it came in the way of experiences not gifts, and I couldn’t be happier.

I can tell you right now, that this isn’t selfless. It’s for good reasons, it’s for beautiful reasons. But when I say instead of presents I’m going to see my sponsor child in Honduras graduate, underneath is the fact that at one point I tried to go stay with an English teacher there instead of buying my car and I wept bitterly in the walk in freezer at Chick-fil-a the night I got my car instead. And of course, I loved my car and I was and am grateful for it. So don’t get me wrong, it was a wonderful thing, but I was also devastated. I studied duel lingo religiously for months to try to become fluent in order to be a translator, and I watched Facebook avidly for every picture of the faces I knew there. Because it’s dangerous, it’s a dangerous place and I wanted to know they were ok, but also on the porch when we all sat around talking about our experience, I left a piece of my heart there. In the city with the ‘rollercoaster’ hill, or the pool with the bats that flew frighteningly close, or the stars on the roof in the middle of the night after the longest day. In the rooms where we slopped watered down paint on the walls and each other, and sang songs until we couldn’t anymore. In the nursery where we wiped dirty noses and ran around chasing precious, precious children. This is not selfless at all.

We aren’t doing anything wild or extraordinary, we’re just fighting for the inspired things. For the moments in peoples lives that are making history, because we want to be there for that. I hope someday to look back on my life and see that I answered every calling that set my soul on fire and I lived vigorously in pursuit of that which will make the world a better place. Be it music or art or writing or laughter. That I sought out adventure, instead of waiting for it to come to me, and when it did indeed just fall in my lap, that I scooped it up with every ounce of spontaneity and energy I could. I want to live a life where I’m constantly in awe of the majesty in front of me and all that has come before it. Not that each day is better than the last, but that yesterdays memories don’t affect todays, and tomorrow belongs tomorrow. That I learn to not carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, and place my worries at the foot of the cross, or on a balcony in the middle of the night.

The most beautiful thing to me in all of this is the wonder of God’s timing. Last year I’d been trying to plan a trip back to stay over Thanksgiving break, and this Thanksgiving we bought plane tickets, and it couldn’t be more perfect. They told me no, and if they hadn’t I never would’ve been so raw with God, and we never would’ve found the cheaper tickets. I never would’ve found the words to say what it really meant to me, which is that it’s important for me to be there. Because for my graduation family from all over took off work and drove or flew down to see me graduate because it was important, it meant something for them to be there and I wanted to do the same. It’s never been more clear to me how perfect God’s timing is, and suddenly I’m reminded that it doesn’t just apply to this, but to everything. There is a time for everything and for everything there is a time, and my timing is probably not those times, but His timing is perfect.

So that’s my Thanksgiving and my Christmas, and all of the days in between.

On the one year anniversary I posted a picture with the words, Last year on our last day of VBS Pastor Jeony looked at me and said "We'll see you next year" with a nod and I hung to that hope for a while, but it's been a year and I haven't made it back yet. Here's to shooting for next year, or any time in between.

This is my anywhere in between. We are going forward.

http://www.soarministries.org/team-reflections

http://lostandlaughing.over-blog.com/2015/07/why-are-you-afraid.html