Surrender

Thursday, February 17, 2011

My roommate asked me the other day why I didn't keep up with my blog, and so I find myself logging in tonight to check where I left off. This is what I found saved in the drafts folder from november 2010.

"I'm not gonna lie... I've had a time of it lately. Let's just say that life at 29 years of age is not what I had hoped it would be, and it's left me somewhat resentful. I have a feeling everybody at some point has a moment of clarity when they realize that they're exactly where they want to be or they aren't. And I'm not. Don't get me wrong, there are so many things that I have to be thankful for. I just find myself forgetting to be thankful.

See, I always imagined I'd be back overseas by now, doing work with street children or the poor... not working at a bakery. A few months ago, my expectations, hopes, dreams, etc. all came crashing down around me. I keep poking at them with my toe, hoping there's still some life there, but I know I cannot revive them on my own. And instead of hoping that the Lord is working things out in His own time and way, I question Him. I think this is the first time I've really, truly had difficulty with God. I mean, there are always ups and downs, but I am struggling to believe He has my best interests at heart and I feel resentful. Didn't He call me so long ago to do mission work? If so, then why am I still here? It's too easy for me to get stuck here. It's too easy to let it sit and fester, too easy to ignore the truths I know about God."

I find that so many things change in the course of 4 months. What once used to be a festering resentfulness for not being back oversees has turned into a sort of clarity about what I really want to do with my life. At some point during these past 4 months, I have come to realize that my life's mission is truly to serve victims of human trafficking. I even have begun to wonder if the whole purpose of my family going to Latin America so many years ago was to introduce me to the horror that is child prostitution. Those experiences from 10 years ago have formed and shaped my life in a way I never knew possible. Now here I am in the middle of applying to grad school and hoping to study social work so that I can be of some real use to these victims. And for the first time in over 10 years, I have realized that if I can spend my life working with victims of human trafficking, then I will be okay living in the states. That's a huge deal for me. HUGE. I don't fit this culture. I don't long for the American Dream of the cute house with the white picket fence, etc... I've seen too much poverty to be able to live the typical American life. I hate the materialism of our society and wish that we as a culture realized how important it is to live in community with others. Oh, the list goes on and on.

Although I didn't know it at the time, my crumbled world took a change for the better when my old roommate found me sobbing in my bedroom last September. I was in the middle of, at the time, the most critical decision I had to make, and I did not want to make it. Anna called me out in the most gentle yet no b.s. way possible. She said I had spent so long wanting to be back overseas that I wasn't living the life right in front of me. She said that I longed so much to be back with my friends overseas that I wasn't connecting or communing with the ones right here. ......Bottom line? I was wasting my life away wishing for something that was out of my control. I made my decision right then and there, and although it broke my heart and took months to come back from, healing did come. Peace did come. And along with that came a renewed purpose to seek out people and life right here in front of me.

There's an old poem that I heard about a long time ago that I think just about sums it up:

A Peace that Cometh after Sorrow

Jessie Rose Gates

There is a peace that cometh after sorrow,

Of hope surrendered, not of hope fulfilled;

A peace that looketh not upon tomorrow,

But calmly on a tempest that it stilled.

A peace that lives not now in joy's excesses,

Nor in the happy life of love secure;

But in the unerring strength the heart possesses,

Of conflicts won while learning to endure.

A peace there is, in sacrifice secluded,

A life subdued, from will and passion free;

Tis not the peace that over Eden brooded,

But that which triumphed in Gethsemane.

So I guess the thing I'm slowly, oh so very slowly, learning right now is to surrender my desires over and over.... and over and over and over again to the Lord. Because when it comes down to it, I wouldn't be happy overseas saving the world if its not where He has for me to be. And if its His plan for me to stay here in this land that I wish I loved more, then okay. I surrender. Someone once made the analogy of what a "living sacrifice" looks like... When we place ourselves onto the altar of God, it hurts. Bad. So we crawl back off. But then we realize what we have to do and crawl back on.... its this idea of crawling back and placing ourselves back on the altar over and over and over again that struck me. Continual sacrifice. Continual surrender.

Not my will, but Yours, oh Lord.