The Roadless Journey

The roadless journey

Most roads take us on fairly predictable journeys. But what about the journeys that take us off-road and come at us as a surprise? Does it all have purposeful design in each and every step of the way?

Some days I readily accept and believe that they do. On other days, I tend to doubt it.

Thoughts like these and many others have run rampant through my mind since the moment my fiancé found out for sure he'd be on 400 day orders with the US Army and deployed back in November.

I'm often nudged/reminded of very small, yet very significant pieces of truth along the way. Things like where the Bible says, "A man plans his ways, but his steps are ordered of The Lord." Oh. So. True. Even when we don't know the details or the details are ever-changing, God knows the plan from beginning to the ending. As one of my all-time favorite speakers/authors Priscilla Shirer once said, "Everything that comes into our lives passes through the fingertips of the hand of a sovereign God." I'm convinced He's in control. He's got this. He's working all things for good.

Many verses/songs from my childhood remind me of truths like, "This is the day The Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it." I must admit it's much easier to sing those things as a five year old in what I used to call "Scunday School class" than it is to live them out in the realities of everyday life. Am I rejoicing in every day that God gives me? Are you? If not, why are we not?

Deployments aren't easy, and I know that even though it's a first for me, I'm not the only one who's faced this before. Tons face deployment, on both sides, all the time. In fact, lots are currently facing it right now, so that we can continue on in our daily, uninterrupted freedoms. (side note: We could all be more gentle and loving in how we express our "right" to those freedoms, could we not?)

For you, it may not be deployment. It doesn't have to be. Just fill in the blank with whatever difficulty, obstacle, confusion, not-going-according-to-my-plans ordeal you're currently going through, and I challenge you to make a list of what (positive) lessons it's teaching you about yourself, life in general, and God Himself.

A couple of things I've already learned from this deployment are this:

1. Hellos get sweeter, but goodbyes never get easier. Hug the people you can today. Send long-distance love to those you can't.

2. The general American population needs a world map of common sense. "E-raq" is not a place, people. On any continent. on Earth. At all.

3. I'm engaged to the strongest, yet sweetest man I know. His commitment to serve me and others is unmatched. I love watching and following his example. I'm thankful God gave him to me.

4. I can trust an all-knowing and always-loving God with the days, weeks, and months ahead on this roadless journey. When the time of the journey is unknown and the road that marks a clear path ahead is seemingly erased (or never forged in the first place), I can still trust God. He never changes.

5. We can all be more appreciative of people, time, and the fleeting moments we have together.

6. Make the best of today. It's all we're given at a time.

Fear: redirected

Over the past couple of days, I’ve experienced some not-so-fun events of life in both professional and personal realms. These circumstances and situations have taken me back, made me pause, and definitely made me think, over-think, and think some more. Overall, they’ve bothered me more than they should’ve for the wrong reasons, and not bothered me enough for the right reasons. I know I’m being vague here – that’s part of the point.  Because, really, these situations – they’re not about me. 

There’s a much bigger principle and lesson to learn for all of us here.

Throughout it all this week, I’ve come to the grips why these things have bothered me so. Each of these situations has attacked me at a point of my great weakness – they have threatened to take away the things I love the most. Put another way, they have pinpointed some of my personal fears.

Some may be able to relate and say God is using this for His glory and just getting my attention and heart’s focus back fixated on Him. (a.k.a. Leading me to the Rock that is Higher than I.) Some may look closer at the situations I’ve faced and say it’s an all-out-spiritual-warfare-of-the-soul that Satan’s using to attack me, threaten my hope, steal my joy, and confuse and distract from what my God is doing in my life.

Regardless of the “why’s,” I read a verse today that was completely helpful and hit me right where I’m living this week. It’s in Philippians 2:12-13, which urges us to work out our own faith or own salvation with fear and trembling since it is God Himself working in us.

Oftentimes, when we teach verses like this to our little ones (in my case, to my students at LCA), we would take some time to explain that “fear“ in the Bible oftentimes stands for “respect,” as in “fear the Lord” means to simply respect the Lord, His name, His Word, His principles on life, etc. This is how it was taught to me, and I do believe that meaning does hold true in many instances. However, in this case in Philippians 2:12-13, I tend to disagree. (and I could be totally wrong on this… I am willing to be corrected if I am.) I tend to think we should take the words “fear and trembling” literally or for their “face value.”

The many things we fear in life, whether real or perceived, create negative feelings in us that threaten to harm something inside of us. In some cases, it transfers out to an actual physical trembling of the body. I think no different definition for the words “fear and trembling” would suffice in the case of Philippians 2. We should have a reverent fear and an actual trembling of what God is doing in our lives to enable us to work out our own faith or our own salvation.

Much like the things I’ve encountered this week, those situations and circumstances in our lives aren’t fun to face… and they’re oftentimes heavy to handle… but they’re exactly what God uses to grow our faith.

Fear redirected in light of this verse in Philippians 2 produces faith beyond comprehension and a God-given peace that’s unshakable, yet worth trembling over.