Sweaty, hard love in the Georgia heat.

I’ve been here for a little more than a week and to describe my time here in words would be an injustice. It’s hard, it’s overwhelming, it’s scary but it’s also incredibly beautiful and rewarding and perfect-fully exhausting. The outdoor life of tent camping in the humid heat of Georgia, the ice cold bucket showers at 6 in the morning, the crunchy hand washed laundry and layer of bugs I have to pick out of my tent every morning isn’t exactly luxurious but such a beautiful adventure. 

   It’s apparent that God placed me here, in these strange circumstances, for unique growth. Hard growth. Growth I didn’t even recognize I needed. Because of Covid-19, we are all split up in every specific groups and cohorts, wearing masks, quarantining in small groups and being tied down to a small, specific meeting point. Our days are slow and long with not much planned a lot of time with Jesus. What a crazy, perfect challenge that he presented me with. Some things about me: my worst fears in the entire world is not being able to run away. Something that is in abundance here. 

There is no place to roam freely or get away, and there is a lot of time with no tasks where my mind can swallow me whole.  It’s almost as if God said, ‘alright, it’s time to talk about this’. And through this past week trying to handle these, God smacked me with a hard realization. 

I desperately grasp for comfort in everything but Him. 

When these fears start to consume me and my anxiety starts to kick in I desperately try and squish comfort out of any sort of distractions. Distractions I didn’t even realize I worshiped. Here, there’s no way to wake up in the morning and see your reflection to control the way you look, there’s no way to distract myself with the world of the internet, there’s no way to go out and do crazy things, there’s not even the people I’ve know all my life here with me to find comfort in. 

   It’s like I’m in this box, desperately looking and grasping for a window to jump out of when there is a door and handle right in front of me. The thing is I never saw the door because I always just jumped out the window to something temporarily comforting because I had the option to. Now, all those windows are gone and I have to find comfort in that door, in Him. And let me tell you, it’s hard. 

 I can’t say that I’ve completely grabbed that handle and opened that door quite yet, I’m learning that’s it’s a process, I’m still struggling. I’m struggling with doubt that that door will even work, that there won’t be any windows on the other side or that I’ll get to the other side and desperately want to go back. 

 But along with the tears and anxiety and sleepless nights, there’s been worship by a pond under the stars, there’s been dance parties, there’s been sliding down slippery grass slopes in the pouring rain, there’s been laughing so hard you almost cry. 

   It’s been a hard, eye opening, beautiful process. And I’m learning what it means to follow Jesus. Learning that obedience isn’t a lack of questioning but it’s peace in his answers. Learning that there is such overwhelming, overflowing freedom in surrender. Learning that all of it points to Him. 

Some word that has lifted me up through this season. 1 Peter 1:3-4 “Praise be to God and Father of our Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a LIVING hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can NEVER perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is KEPT in heaven for you.” 

Jesus literally gives us this inheritance to eternal love, meaning I am a child and part of the family of God, and nothing, literally nothing  can separate you from his love and mercy. I’ll spend my whole life stepping into that door and they jumping out a window to find that the door will always be there, even though I don’t deserve it. What a love. 

Thanks Father, for your crazy, relentless love.