Faith Requires Action
Just shy of four years ago, after another morning of me begging and whining and gnashing my teeth with God declaring I couldn’t do it anymore, he proceeded to give me a two year roadmap full of action items and timelines and places to go and then at the end of it a wild and wondrous list of possibilities hanging out over the abyss which would be my future. The whole interchange with God - which looked a lot like me taking dictation for two hours - was as unbelievable as it was the most rational thing I had done in a long time.
I spent the next four months praying for confirmation that what I had “heard” was right. I told not a soul. Not one single soul.
Four months later, on top of a hill overlooking a lake in Rwanda, I got my final (of three) confirmations.
I started walking out the list/instructions/roadmap within weeks which set off the hardest seventeen months of my life. Without a hint of dramatics, I damn near didn’t survive it - emotionally, mentally, and by the end - physically.
Three months later on the fourth and final month of my sabbatical - and the last item on the roadmap - I burned the roadmap on a hike while at the top of the second tallest mountain in Bergen, Norway. I prayed. I cried. I gave thanks. Then, I hiked back down and proceeded to spiral, untethered, and rudderless.
I slowly felt permission to reimagine my life…my work…me. The days and weeks and months - and yes, years - since have been both challenging and breathtaking with their mind-bending possibilities…and questions.
Who am I without x, y, or z???
What am I?
As I come up on the two and four year anniversaries of those pivotal moments with God, I am struck by all I have learned about myself, but even more, what I have learned about him. He showed up for me, and then he showed out, but neither would have happened if I hadn’t risked everything to believe in what I heard him say to me four years ago. Works, actions, they’re great. But faith, faith is where the magic happens with God. At least that has been my experience.
It was insane and audacious what he told me to do. It wasn’t a quick fix. It was difficult, brutal, and took me to the very end of myself.
And in the end, it was the most loving thing he has ever done for me.
…and as a footnote, in the end, it was also loving to others, though at the time they certainly didn’t see it that way through their lens of disappointment in, and anger against, me.
