#notesfromthefield

Winter 2023 

At the beginning of 2023, Copenhagen felt like nothing more than a pipe dream. What I realized (and am realizing still as I look back even now) is that through this experience, God was calling me to a level of faith that I had never known before. But, before I go further, I need to share the abridged version of my testimony. 

—

Testimony: "to give one's story”; "to tell the story of how one became a Christian"

— 

I was raised in a Christian household. Generations of women before me, on both sides of my family lineage, prayed to and feared (stood in reverence of) the Lord. My aunt likes to share an anecdote from her childhood about my great-grandmother. She would stand in the doorway of her house in Abbeville, South Carolina, and pray this prayer: “Lord bless my children, and my children’s children, and their children’s children.” Quick math helps you deduce that that prayer includes me. When I hear that story, I’m in awe of how God planned, way before I was even born, to bring me into the world and into a family whose faith was as strong and mighty as the loblolly pine trees that stood like centurions guarding my grandmother’s house. I was raised to believe that I was created and loved by God (Jesus loves me, this I really do know). I was the little girl in third grade who carried her bible in her backpack and wrote prayers about her friends (and her grade-school crushes) to God. 

Somewhere along the way, the message of the truth got mixed up with other messages that seemed equally as enticing, and I started to look to other things to satisfy my longings – material things, attention from boys, and the need to be loved by all. At 18, when I went to college, I essentially walked away from my faith. My bible came with me to Nashville, Tennessee but collected dust as it sat on shelves being toted from dorm room to dorm for four years. At 21, I moved to New York and the God who leaves the 99 sheep for the 1 chased after me. I can describe this only as the move of the holy spirit. Sitting on my couch one Saturday afternoon, I quite literally said out loud “I should go to church.” Seeing as how I hadn’t been to church in over five years, and this wouldn’t be my naturally-occurring thought, I knew that it was God, working on my heart to open it back up and rediscover my belief in and love for him. And while I won’t share the full ins and outs of my story, what you need to know is that at the beginning of 2023, while I whole-heartedly believed in a God who was real, and all powerful, and full of love, I had never felt more distant from my faith in my entire life. 

This time, rather than my wandering being caused by a lack of understanding of the gospel, I was wandering because I was angry. Angry at a God who (I thought) was holding out on me. “Everyone” was moving away to new cities and moving on to bigger and better; “everyone” was finding their partners and getting married; “everyone” was living out their dreams while I was stuck on the sidelines, yelling “put me in coach!” (As we know, “everyones,” “alls,” and “nevers” rarely prove to be true). Where was this loving God I believed in, as I sat in my low-grade depression, numbing myself with tv, alcohol, and looking for love everywhere but the one place I could truly receive it to the full? I had carved out an island of solitude for myself, where no life raft could come in and no flare signals were being sent up. I felt like if I kept sharing my grief and anger, my friends and family would grow tired of me and “surely,” I thought, “God was fed up with my antics.” 

–

I’ll pause here and say the one thing I truly want to share particularly with my dear friends reading this who don’t believe in God, much less a God who could be active and present when the world shows otherwise. Hear my heart in these words. 

I know, it seems like God doesn’t exist. There is so much devastation and destruction and hatred in the world. It seems like nothing will ever get better. And in many ways, this is true, the world as we know it is in fact wasting away. However, I wholeheartedly believe this: Walking with God, day by day, even when I’ve been at my lowest moments, he has always been by my side. Through words from a friend, moments of daily peace, bible verses that soothe like healing balm on the wounds of my heart, to name a few examples. Even when I’m left with more questions than answers, I have hope. Not the kind that daydreams of a far off utopia where there is no war and world peace. I believe in an real, living creator of the universe who cares about me and all of my comings and goings. What I learned most about God in this time is that he isn’t angry or ready to strike me down when I stumble. He’s there, ready and waiting with open arms, to help me back up when I’m the little girl who's just fallen off her bike as she’s learning to ride without training wheels (and he’ll do the same for you) To know that God, when we were destined to be stuck here with no hope, rescued us through Jesus; to know he did it by sending Jesus in our place, not because we did anything to earn it but simply because he loves us. It’s unfathomable sometimes, and yet fully true.

–

In my numbness and anger (and many tears) the one prayer I could muster up outside of my anger and raw emotions was: “God, I know you will not leave me here.” Over and over again the words would escape my lips; even when I barely believed them. Microscopic seeds of faith being scattered into the air. 

That same evening back in October, when Camille and Leanne helped pour water on the seeds of a new dream planted in my heart, Leanne encouraged me to do something I’ve never done before, and it would require me to fully trust in God to provide financially. She said to me, “write down the number that you think you would need to get there, and share it with God.” 

–

Faith:  “this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see.”

–

I’ve never done something like that before. I didn’t do things like that. But, a funny thing happens when we reach the end of ourselves; we’re willing to try. So I sat down one cold morning in mid-January and wrote down three numbers to present to God: 

The first was the number I’d imagined I’d need to live comfortably and have some spending money while in Denmark.

The second was the number I wanted to have saved for a buffer in savings when I returned from Denmark and would leap into the deep-end of my freelance career. 

The third was the amount of credit card debt I had racked up in recent years. 

“Lord, if you’re willing, make a way.” That was it. Those simple words, trusting that the answer would come back to me in some way (either a yes, a no, or a not yet). 

Over the course of that year, as I worked out a way to come back to myself emotionally and spiritually (started opening up to friends and family despite my fears of rejection, counseling, and starting anew in a church community) God, once again, was moving in the background. Photo opportunity after photo opportunity came to me simply from people reaching out, not by my own doing (truly!) Slowly but surely I was able to save up three-month’s worth of savings, then the amount I wanted to have while in Denmark, and then finally, the credit card debt was paid off. For brevity’s sake I’m keeping this part short but what you need to hear is this: 

This isn’t some prosperity, “believe in God and you’ll get rich quick” message. This is simply me, a woman who didn’t ever think to ask God for help in this capacity, laying down my expectations and ideas of what I thought was possible and asking for the impossible from an impossible God. And he answered. He can do it. 

At the beginning of this year, 2024, my faith and this dream to move had been fanned into a flame and I was inching closer and closer to this ellipsis, this suspension point or jumping off point, of something completely new ready to sprout up in my life. 

To be continued with the final part, part 3, soon.

--

Footnote: