The Core

So what do you do when everything seems to be falling apart and just confusingly wrong? Go back to the heart, the core.

Here I sit in Ft Collins, CO still fighting the insane desire to hop a plane and get myself back to China – the place I know, the place I have a purpose. How can everything feel so wrong in my own country? How can I feel so alone? It’s gotta be wrong… doesn’t it?

 Where have my eyes been focused these last couple months of transition? On my circumstances, my fears, my pain, on those I miss and the work that seems important, but I’m not doing anymore. People said I was brave (maybe a bit crazy) when I moved to China 3 years ago. I was stepping out in faith doing a work the Father would commend. During the awesome times of watching toilets burn, long talks with teammates and students, and studies that forced me to think deeper and different than I ever had before… I knew, this is a work the Father can commend. During the times the rats stalked my apartment, and I wandered the packed streets feeling completely alone and I screwed up the language…again and a lesson plan fell flat and students just didn’t show up… I knew, this is a work the Father can commend.

 And then He said… go back. And in my blind faith I barely questioned the command and returned. Now I sit in front of a computer every day, punch in data, try to understand the wide variety of newsletter desires from 600 teachers and I can’t see it… is this a work the Father can commend? Why would He call me away from blatant faith based work and put me in front of a computer in a city where I know nobody? 

 Everything was wrong. But the Father didn’t let me stay in the despair of my plans/ideas collapsing. Instead He subtly drew my attention to a book I hadn’t read in about 3 years… Hinds Feet on High Places. A cute little allegory. But this cute little allegory highlights (for me) what the core is, where my heart is and where my eyes should be. I went to China rather reluctantly allowing the Father to guide my steps, trusting He was beside me telling me “go this way or that way”. And He was. I went to China because the very idea of not going when He said go, to turn my back on His guidance was like stepping into a blackness not worth living. And these reasons for going should also be the reasons I returned. 

 At my core is Him, my desperate desire to follow Him, cling to Him, lean on Him, and, above all else, trust Him. If He wants to lead me in what appears the wrong way, He can. If all His promises seem to be getting further away, I would rather lose those promises than Him “If He can deceive me, He may” only “Do not let me turn back. Do not let me turn away.” And that is what I need to remember, no longer looking at all that appears wrong, or focusing on the discomfort and pain of leaving what was right for a season.

 After Hinds Feet on High Places He has pushed me to read through Job… the pain of a man who kept speaking words of a future hope, and kept trying to cling to his core, his heart in the midst of weeping. And the Father wasn’t finished with that. No, all this reading is just tilling the hardened ground to hear the words of a friend in China who is struggling but can still offer words of encouragement. A heart of a friend and a reminder that even in China there are times everything seems wrong. Even in China, I need to keep my core in focus. The ground, gradually breaking, is then watered with the words of a woman I barely know who took it upon herself to go to each workspace in the new office building and lift up specific needs. And I told her I was struggling and hurting and she went before the Father with words of encouragement, assurance and a special word (two words) He gave her describing me “Brave heart”. And I started to cry. Definitely appeared the Brave heart here, don’t you think. Coming back to America has taken just as much courage as going to China and that courage has been formed by my Creator. I step with no idea where I’m going trying to trust and then I get scared and pull into myself and hide – still He called me Brave Heart. He sees me as I should be and, hopefully, who become. But He also sees the woman I have been, sometimes, in recent years and through this wonderful woman and distant friend, He reminded me. He is my core, my center and I am His Brave Heart J