Here I am now finally writing my first blog since I’ve moved from YWAM LA back to my childhood home in MountLake Terrace, Washingon.
What a journey even the last 2 months have been! Soon after I arrived back home I went on a great adventure to Germany to spend two weeks with my really great friend (back then) Micha, and then returned having decided to be in a relationship with that really great friend of mine. What sweet memories I have to look back on from those weeks with him and his family. Then returning home Micha joined us shortly after to spend 3 weeks with my family and I before he moves down to LA to do his own DTS at YWAM LA.
Those long awaited weeks went by so very fast it is hard to remember the time when I was longing for those weeks to begin! And then began the week of really being back in my original home, and the reality of my new life hit instantly.
Immediately uncertainty was all my mind could think about. Every day I thought, “WHAT THE HECK AM I DOING HERE!” I seriously wondered constantly if I had made the wrong decision to not continue in YWAM, I thought maybe I didn’t hear God correctly, that I made the wrong decision, because being home felt so dull and purposeless. My new desire was to return to my home in LA to a place which is full of passion and life and a different kind of family. But then I remembered how sure I was that God was leading me to this next season, but now that I am in that season I haven’t felt so sure of that leading.
I’ll admit I’ve cried every day and even now I still have to resist tears. Only 2 weeks home and it has felt like a lifetime. I miss my friends, I miss my boyfriend, I miss California, I miss being in a community of encouraging believers, I miss having a job that is focused on God, I just miss what has been normal for the last two and half years. I have so many questions, in fact all I do is question everything because I am confused as to what God is doing in me, I don’t see where He is leading me.
How I feel right now reminds me of an analogy I heard a girl use one time, where I feel like I am in a dark hall way that is completely black, and I am walking down this hall trying to feel the walls around me so that I can figure out where the heck I am going, but I am scared because it is scary, its dark, and I can’t see. It sounds a little dramatic but it is legitimately how I’ve felt.
So every day I wake up and go back to the same question, what are you trying to teach me God because I don’t like this season, I don’t like this part of the Journey yet. Then I start dreaming of the next season where things are might be more the way I want them to be.
I realized two days ago that maybe, just maybe right now God has literally lead me out of the very place I love, the place where I feel alive, and purposed, just to show me that a life of missions, weather with YWAM or just in general, is the calling He has placed on my life and in my heart. Not that I am walking outside of Gods calling right now, but He is revealing to me that missions is not just something I like to do on the side it is a calling he destined in me from the beginning. Maybe it is taking a season of questions, and uncertainty to really help me believe and know that He has called me. I didn’t choose Him He chose me to be a light to a world that doesn’t know Him.
God is also teaching me how to be content with the now instead of waiting to be content with the future. When you are a follower of Jesus it is important to realize that our contentment is not dependant on what we have, or where we are or what we are doing. We can live satisfied and content when we are aware of God in everything we do, and everywhere we go, because when we are aware of Him it leads us to a greater trust in Him. There is not one part of my life that God is uninterested in, so I can choose to let go of control and know that the one who knows every detail can work out all things for the good.
So right now even though sometimes it still seems like I’m feeling my way through the dark hallway, I know one thing that is for certain, God is with me, leading me, guiding me, teaching me, and loving me the whole way through. Okay maybe more than one thing is for certain but that is because there are so many promises from God that I can hold on to in season that is so uncertain. But still I will trust in Him.
Psalm 37:23-24; The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in Him; though He may stumble He will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with His hand.
-Emily