Waves

I learned a little something about waves whenever I was in Costa Rica living on the beach: if you try to stand and face the wave, it will smash you to bits, but if you trust the water and let it carry you, there’s nothing sweeter. Sarah from Australia had a hay-day trying to teach me what to do as a large wave approached, as I would often end up upside down, feet kicking above water, face in the sand struggling to find air. I think I have decided that my life follows suit. Waves=change. If you dig in and fight the change you’re facing, it will indeed annihilate you. It will hold you under the water, swirl you around, confuse and scare you, leaving you coughing and gasping for oxygen wondering how you got 50 yards down the beach.

This last season in my life has been characterized, more than anything else, by change. Hard, but good, swirling, one-after another changes. So many that I can’t quite regain my footing before the next one comes, very much like being tumbled by waves. And I am not saying that this change is bad, but I am saying that this change is hard. Within one year I lived with my sister, had comfortable best friends at Texas A&M, skyped with a long distance friend every night, graduated from college, packed my car and moved to Denver, Colorado, attended Youth With A Mission and camped the rockies, made 4 unforgettable friends that I lived and breathed alongside 24 hours a day for five months who only God could have picked, said friends became family. I traveled to Panama, traveled to Costa Rica, slept in a palm tree hut and ate only rice and fish heads, almost died on a canoe trip across the Pacific ocean, fell in love with some kiddos doing jazzercise in the streets, came back to the States culture shocked, drove back across the country, lived at home in a tiny room with my hero of a brother and littlest sister, worked in the Shady T to make enough money to move, drove across the country for a third time to Colorado—this time permanent, got a full time job doing something I thought I would never do and love it, started working at K-LIFE and joined another family. Seems like the adventure of a lifetime right? Well it was. And it was hard.

I have an infinite capacity to over-sensationalize the past. It’s like I cannot appreciate and take in all the beauty while I am IN IT, even while I am trying REALLY hard not to take my time for granted. Relentlessly, time eludes me and I end up looking back on the good and the hard times. But the painful sting of memories always leaves me in awe of how amazing God is through it all.

The bible is drenched in suffering and yet I always expect to be able to click my ruby red slippers and wake up with everything figured out. I’d really like the wisdom without the walking through fire. God doesn’t work this way, I have learned. Anyways I have been reading and listening to a lot of things on suffering and how it is a part of the human experience. (Thanks a heap, Eve, you wench) But there is something beautiful about our suffering when the God who loves us allows it to draw us back to Him. We hit rock bottom and find God wanting to lift us up. We find Him reaching out a hand offering help when we have once again tried to do life on our own and failed miserably. (Is this just me?) I recently told a friend that sometimes God allows us to be lonely, to hurt, to be sad, to be desperate in order to remind us once again that only He possess all-sufficient satisfaction, but I think it applied to me maybe even more than her. And although the fire burns and hurts, we end up back on our knees reaching out to Jesus, with a clear vision of our utter and complete dependency on Him. It’s the most loving thing He could do.

Looking back now at times in my life that I felt most injured, I can see how powerfully God used the trials and tribulations to refine me. I think it says something about being refined through the fire in the bible like 10-30 times, but who’s counting?

The thing is, I never see how beautiful the gold will be after being refined in the fire, WHILE I am in the fire…or to bring it home with the ‘waves’ analogy: when I am underwater swirling and panicking, lungs about to explode, all I can think is ‘OH shiZ how the hell do I get out of here!?! Where’s the TOP?!’ I am screaming that this hurts/sucks/blows or just straight up…FML at the top of my lungs. (“forfeit my life”, thanks Kathar)

More than anything I think this is a failure to believe in the story of who God is and what he is doing in this world amidst my waves. Like Donald Miller says, we are trees in the story of a forest. But instead of living that story — one of sacrifice and purpose and character — I begin to live a much smaller story, and that story is only about me. I want an answer, a timeline, and a map and QUICK please. I don’t want to have to trust God or anything I can’t see. I don’t want to wait or follow. I refuse to unclench my hands and my jaw, and I lock my knees and steel myself in the face of almost every wave. And then like clockwork I end up crying in the shower or alone in my car jamming out to some sappy song. Pathetic? I know.

Every wave presents us with a choice to make, and quite often, unfortunately, I have stood, both resolute and terrified, staring down a wave. I have been smacked straight on with the force of the water, tumbled, disoriented, gasping for breath and for my swimsuit bottoms—(unless I am at YWAM wearing the jungle ONE-sy). About 2 weeks ago I got smacked in the face so hard that I didn’t know which way was up. And there was God at the end of it all waiting to pick me up and call the ‘idiot who can’t swim’ (READ: me) His own. And oh how sweet it is to look up at a loving Father who wipes the sand out of my eyes and holds me until I can stop coughing and crying, setting me back on the shore.

I am praying that I would let the waves carry me more often as change is inevitable. I am praying that God would be gentle as he allows waves to come into my life. But most of all I am praying that I live the story that God called me to amidst the waves. I am praying to find it within myself, in the wildest of seasons, just for a moment, to trust in the goodness of God, who made it all and holds it all together to find myself drawn along to a whole new place, drenched in grace. Maybe today I will begin to let the waves do their work in me. I pray the same for you, friend. I pray you swim.