7 days away and 3000 dollars out; this is a cry out

Countdown to l’Afrique: 1 week; 7 days; 168 hours
Support raised: 2300
Support still needed: 3000

Six months ago, I was standing in front of this girl I didn’t know at DCC when my life was changing drastically and I didn’t even know it.  She went to a West African summer project last summer, and she’d just stood up with her team in one of the smaller seminars to talk to a room of people interested in going to Africa this summer.  I couldn’t tell you why I’d picked that room.  Indecisive, as always, I walked up and down the corridor to choose one of the informational meetings on a specific project.  Finally, I chose the room at the very end of the hallway with a big poster reading “Côte d'Ivoire” across the front.  I didn’t even know what part of Africa that was in.

After the meeting, a few of the girls were standing outside of the room, and I was just looking at some of the pictures from the project that were set up on the poster. One of them asked me if I was thinking about going.  I kind of laughed and told her it’d be really cool and all, but that it wasn’t very probable.  I was about to walk away when she said, “If it’s about money, don’t let that stop you.”  I didn’t say anything about money, so I just said okay and started to leave, but she still called after me, “I was 2800 dollars away from my support goal less then 2 weeks away from the trip, and it all came in.  Don’t let it be about the money!”

The funny thing is that it wasn’t about the money at all then.  But it was like there was this Spirit living in her that is all-knowing or something and spoke those words because He knew I’d need them now…

I applied to the trip in a haze.  One minute it wasn’t even a possibility, and the next I was on the phone with the original project women’s director, being accepted.  But she also told me the project had changed and that she would no longer be going on the trip. 

My project was now venturing to Togo.  We were departing on the 26th instead of the 31st, and we were raising $5250 instead of $4800.  Less time, more money.  But I accepted.  Because money and time didn’t change where I knew Jesus was calling me to plant my feet this summer. 

And it still doesn’t.

The support I’ve raised so far came in very quickly and in bulk.  It was incredibly encouraging.  And then it stopped coming in. 

I am on my hands and knees; I do not regularly ask for help, so all of this has been terribly humbling.  I have these 2 facts at war in my head. 
On one side: 3000 dollars?!  In 7 days? I have no idea where that is going to come from.
On the other side: 3000 dollars?!  In 7 days?  Good thing the Lord is sovereign; good thing I’m confident of what He’s called me to.  Good thing He’s not worried about this trip, or His work in me and in Africa, and He’s most certainly not freaking out right now thinking, “Oh no, how am I going to provide this money?”  I almost have to laugh when I think about the other side of the war in my head. 

So I tell my heart to tell my head that I know who the Lord is, and I know what He promises, and I know that, as a friend reminded me yesterday, God does not just make orders that He can’t pay for. 
I tell my heart to tell the stress-induced hives on my legs, the empty stomach that can’t keep down real food, and this weary soldier soul that’s still persevering by the strength of the Lord that I will make it to Africa just fine.  Because I will. 
Because He wills.

Someone from MoBap who has no idea that I’m struggling raising this support (I’m not entirely sure who they are) sent out a text at this very moment:
“Only people who are resting constantly in the righteousness of Christ will be able to risk it all wholeheartedly for the glory of Christ.”

So I will abide in Jesus in confidence of His righteousness.  I will remain in and rest in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.  I will trust in the God who commands, 

Cease striving, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.
                                                       PSALM 46 : 1O

Because it’s the only way I can risk this all wholeheartedly.  My pride and my grip on control.  I have to risk that wholeheartedly to glorify Christ. 

United, We Stand; Divided, We Fall

Simply put:

[I screwed up, and I’m sorry for that.]

J, that’s for you.

I’m going to tell you guys a story. I’ve never tried this here, so we’ll see how it goes. In this story, there’s far too much beauty to the brokenness that as much as I want to keep it to myself, because of the hole it left in my heart or even to protect myself from the embarrassment, I can’t. It is stained with the glory of the Lord, and I want to share the glory of the Lord with you.

This one is for the Hartkes.

About two years ago, I told this guy I loved him. Yes, the “L” word- I used it. I’ll tell you: before I used it, that phrase (even more so directed at a man) scared me.
But, that was all before he ever looked at me. Everything changed when all of those reservations were so quickly shoved aside just because of the way he said my name, just because of the way he tapped into my thoughts with all his thoughts and all his words.
So I said it. I told him I loved him, and I meant it. And he told me loved me back, and I believed that. So that was that. We’d said it, and it was enough for me… for a while.
What followed was a whole lot of heartache. Saying those three words was not enough. Hollywood always makes that look like the climatic point. “And they live happily ever after.” Yeah, that’s not true. Especially for two seventeen-year-old kids claiming to follow Jesus and not seeking His counsel through it.
The day he broke up with me is forever burned in my mind. Trust me when I say I tried to forget it and I can’t. But most memorable are the hours I counted down before he came to meet me that morning because I knew it was coming. This is what I wrote that day:

“ I wanted this for so long. And now, as it is coming to an end, I am not sure what I should do- fight for all it’s worth, or let him go easily because there’s nothing left in me.
In Psalm 146, David warns, ‘Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men who cannot save… Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them- the Lord who remains faithful forever.’ Maybe I should have stopped to hope as hard for Jesus, as I did this boy I love. ”

It was too late by the time I realized that. All I could do was let him go. If' I’d been stronger, I would have chosen the same thing he did for us. But I wasn’t stronger; I didn’t rest in the power of the Lord. And it hurt.
There are more journals I’ve found more recently with thoughts I never remember thinking, doubts about our relationship I never remember having. I was so struck by that “L” word and the notion that caring about him the way I did was enough, everything else just seemed so small. It seemed so beyond me (and it was) that I was too afraid to let it out of my hands, to give it over to Jesus (which was ironically the safest thing I could have done.) But it took the whole experience to learn the lesson that would have brought me peace a year and a half ago.

We spent the year following our break-up just as close as we’d always been. Emotionally attached and pulling at the strings we knew of each others’ hearts. We talked about pretty much everything, avoiding only the topic of ‘us.’ I cannot speak for him or his intentions; I will not try. But I can speak for myself. My motives were not hidden in the joy of the Lord, my intentions were not built on my trust of Him. They were built on my own selfishness.

A little over six months ago, our communication came to an abrupt halt. A decision I’d made in anger and bitterness. I was out to prove that I could do it- reject love entirely. I just didn’t know it was Jesus’ love I was rejecting. Our friendship didn’t even have the chance to be transformed by the Lord into something edifying; it no longer existed. We took the pieces of each others’ hearts we’d gathered over all that time and went our separate ways.

Brothers and Sisters, no. I screwed up and I am sorry for that. I sinned against my brother with my selfishness and he sinned against me, but repentance and forgiveness were not what my heart would immediately delight in.

Nevertheless,

Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it; shout, O depths of the earth; break forth into singing, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and will be glorified in Israel. - Isaiah 44:23

Today I am here.

I have forgiven him, and by the graciousness of God, I have found the strength to tell him. I mustered up the courage to send him a letter after almost 5 months of no communication whatsoever. And 2 months later, he mustered up the courage to face me- repenting, and forgiving me too.

I feel that five, ten, twenty years down the road, the hurt of tearing the seal of 2 hearts that had been sloppily bonded will seem much smaller than it even does to me now. And that hurt already seems smaller than it did a year and a half ago. Immensely so. But I won’t forget it. I won’t forget caring that much. I won’t forget seeing another person the way I saw him.

I share my heart and my failures with you, my family, if- for nothing else- to encourage you. To encourage you to be unified, to urge you to allow the work of His Spirit inside you, to share with you this personal story of redemption through forgiveness, to tell you that the our broken hearts are pleasing sacrifices to the Lord. The situation was terrible. The heartache was great. And our failings were so far past what I ever could have imagined would be redeemed. I didn’t think our story would see resolve. In all honesty, I did not expect him to write me back, much less forgive me. And it was all I could do to rejoice in the Lord when he did. He has been so good to us. He has provided such boldness and, simultaneously, humility for us. I stand in awe. There is peace.

Yes, Hartkes, you were indeed correct. It was His words spoken through you that led me where I did not want to go, that challenged me past what was comfortable. And I praise Him that; I thank my God for you. And I thank my God for the redemption of sin.

“ and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord ”

Countdown to l’Afrique: eighteen. days.

My ride to church texted me at 4 this morning to tell me she couldn’t give me a ride, but I didn’t get it until I woke up- at 10. 

So I’ve spent the better half of my morning listening to some suggestions from K Bake’s music blog that I hadn’t gotten to yet (I had to, after all that musical jam and convo last night) and reading Ephesians. 

Apparently for Project, we are reading through it (I’m guessing 6 chapters, 6 weeks… there’s some correlation there).  I am getting more and more excited every day.  It’s still slightly surreal that hopefully in 3 weeks, I will be on my way to AFRICA.  At the beginning of the school year, if you’d asked me if I ever saw myself doing this, I would have had mild hesitation before saying something about it sounding great in theory, but not realistic.  My fam has one missionary kid already, and for the sole purpose of not wanting to follow in her footsteps, I would have likely rejected the idea.  My only compromise had always been that it would be really cool to travel somewhere on a team with my sister and do a mission for a summer.  But with her, and those pretend plans were imagined much further in the future.  When I was done with school.  And more settled, more grounded.  More secure and more comfortable. 

But it’s funny how I’ve realized that He never works on my time schedule, under my expectations.  He called me out of my life this summer, on my own.  And like I said all those months ago, I wanted to be able to say that like Abraham, when God called me, I got up and went.  No questions asked.  My feet were obeying before my mind even had time to think.  It’s a good thing it worked out that way. 

There’s just so much going on  right now that it’s hard to focus on any one thing.  Between finals, support-raising and preparing my heart for Africa, and getting ready to leave CoMO and preparing my heart for home, the only constant is the sovereignty of God over every aspect of all of it. 

Throughout the week of unceasing prayer, I kind of went in and out of Ephesians 4&5.  And I just love the way the Spirit will reveal new things to my eyes about the same passage in scripture each time I read it.  So even today, I was loving the picture of walking as “children of the light.”  And I’m trying to apply that to each one of the things on my To-Do List. 

Okay, I know this was super short, but I’ve got Developmental Psych and History books that are begging for my attention this Sunday afternoon.  If anything, I know I will update at least one last time before I leave for Togo.  And I can guarantee you that one will be a long one. 

Oh and if you want a little summary of what the ‘Pray Without Ceasing’ week was like, check out this link here:

http://kebedefaith.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/pray-without-ceasing/