Terrified

I am home alone. It is not even ten o'clock yet.

Tonight, I am wrestling with a lot of thoughts.

The most prominent one being whether or not I truly want to be honest with you.

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Tonight I am wildly discontent with the direction of my life.

I am watching as my family is packing up to leave. Alaska, Haiti, Seattle, Bolivia, the mountains.

Starting just last week, planes were boarded and tickets were purchased.

Slowly, surely, faithfully, the Almighty has filled us all up. And He is sending us out. One by one.

But I am here.

In Lexington.

And I can't shake the feeling that I am being left behind.

That maybe I wasn't deemed worthy enough to be sent out.

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This, of course, is probably not true.

Driving down Third Street the other day, I felt a rampant passion bubbling up in my chest.

The windows were down and the sun was shining. And I passed condemned building after broken down house after abandoned theater...

And I heard words carried on the wind.

I will have a love affair with Lexington this summer.

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So starting yesterday, I made a quiet promise to myself.

I would take time.

Set aside.

God is in Bolivia. God is in Seattle. God is in Denali. God is in Port-au-Prince.

God is in Kentucky.

And I will find Him.

I will take my shoes off.

Expecting the blue grass to be on fire with His presence.

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But I'm learning something about myself.

I don't know when this mentality developed.

And I don't like it. Not one little bit.

It is, perhaps, the very thing that has been getting in my way this entire time.

My entire life.

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I sat down at a picnic table at Third and Lime, in the sunlight, and opened my Bible.

Luke 12.

I opened my journal.

I prayed with my words and tried to collect my thoughts.

Ever banking on the fact that Jesus knows my heart and can interpret my aching and my groans better than I ever could.

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I went back today.

Sat down again.

And came to this realization.

Somewhere along the way, somewhere in between today's prayers and my deepest understanding of how good God is...

I have developed this fear of asking Him to move.

I am afraid to ask Him for patience, because I am afraid He will put me in trying situations.

I am afraid to ask Him to make me content, because I am afraid He will take everything away.

I am afraid to ask Him to fill my lonely places, because I am afraid He will make me be lonely forever.

I am afraid to ask Him to help me trust Him, because I am afraid He will ask me to walk on water.

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What a horrible Christian I am.

Not that I am afraid of these things...

but that I have spent all this time, convincing you that I have all this faith.

All this trust.

While, almost unknowingly, I pray and yet never voice my deepest thoughts. Despite the fact that He already knows...

I don't talk about what I know really needs to happen.

Maybe He will forget.

Yeah, right.

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What a weird place I am in right now.

Finally understanding what it means both to be in love with Jesus and to fear the Lord.

To want absolutely nothing more than to see His hand at work.

To, for once, really understand that His way, His will, is truly the best.

To comprehend grace... only because it has been given to me so generously.

To understand the simplicity that is the Gospel.

The intricacy which is Creation.

And yet be terrified...

or maybe...

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I wonder if you have to feel this sense of terror, in order to truly know what trust is?

If trusting was a no-brainer ... if trusting was easy ...

could you call it trust?

I feel just like I'm standing in the gaping mouth of the airplane door ... parachute strapped to my back ...

terrified to jump.

It's not that I don't want to.

It's not even, really, that I don't trust the parachute that has been expertly packed into my backpack.

I'm just scared.

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And to be honest... because, after all, I decided to be honest with you.

My confession?

I don't even know where to begin.

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Even as I said that... these words came into my ears.

"Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Here am I, all of me."

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This is my confession.

Forgive me, if I have ever seemed to have it all figured out.