“I laughed at myself for the dramatic wanderings of my mind. But that line, the day I met you I tore up all my maps, kept tumbling through my mind. The imagery, meeting someone and not caring where I was going anymore as long as I was with them. How fearful I was of being lost, and not being able to find my way home. Geographically. Spiritually. Relationally. Here I had stopped my life to get away and seek God about direction in my life, and I have this thought to burn my atlas, my plan B on how to get home. Ooh, He was digging deep here!
Even on a physical level I didn’t want to burn my maps! I liked having my backup plan, my own little security. To burn my maps was asking me to be all in. To say to God, it doesn’t matter where I go, as long as you are with me! To let Him lead me, and when I didn’t feel His leading, to stay still and wait on Him. To not jump the gun and run out on my own strength and ideas and agenda apart from Him.“
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I wrote last year (2018) as a reflection from June 2017 a time when I feel feeling deeply unsettled where I was in life, and antsy for transition, but I didn't know where or what to. I find it intriguing all of this was before I embarked on the journey into dance and learning “to follow”— but the theme is so much the same. Trust and follow, let go of the anxiety of where and when, stop trying to anticipate the next move. I really had little idea then of where or what God would be leading me to. I have been thinking about the self-limitations I put on myself. I kick and scream when others try to pigeonhole me, but I am convinced that the boxes I hold myself in are the hardest to break.
The day I met you I tore up,
All my maps,
And my prophecies
“And my prophecies” These prophecies can be so many things! Actual prophecies, or hopes, dreams, aspiration, well laid out plans. Maybe my maps are gone, but what about my prophecies? What about how I think or hope life will look like? Nothing makes a dance more awkward than thinking I know what move I’m being setup for, only to be led into something TOTALLY different. I don’t mean to fight the lead, but I do. I start to lean in a direction that he’s not leading.
This past year has been weird to say the least. I feel a dissolving of some “prophecies”, or at least the loosening of my grip to the timeline. Perhaps I’ve been leaning in a way that I’m not being led. I still fight the leading of God, even when I don’t mean to. I am more prone to this leaning in the wrong direction when I think where or what I’m being led to is out of my character or who I think I am. This was especially true of learning to dance. Oh man, I wrestled God on that one for way too long! Yet, He knows who I am, before any wounding or brokenness warped how He designed me, and He is faithfully leading me into each place, person, and pursuit with the intention of healing and wholeness.
As these last months have unfolded I have a feeling I perhaps have been leaning in a way God has not been leading. If what I am sensing is true, it will be one of them most wild "out of character" adventures yet. My prayer this last year in particular has been that I would be ready to jump to what God has next when it is revealed and He says, "now."
This reminds me of a pivotal prayer I prayed late December 2012. The New Year and my birthday are always very contemplative times for me. I take stock in the past year, my life, and seek God about the coming year and setting the stage for the future. That year I was in a different transition, less vocational, more spiritual. Sometimes I can feel fatigued by transition seeming to be a constant in my life, but ya know what? THANK GOD He doesn't leave me stagnant! So, that brisk December morning, I went out for a run; to pray and seek God about the new year. A prayer rose on my heart: "God, I don't want to fight you anymore, clear away the things that are preventing me from being obedient!" Eek! It felt like a dangerous prayer! I remember pausing. In shock of what I prayed. Did I really mean that?? Ugh, yes! I had counted the cost and said YES.
Over the years there has been a lot that has been stripped away. Some were obviously holding me back from growth, but there were also a lot of "good" things, that really hurt! I felt the loss. There were years of shifting social groups, recreation time, vacation pursuits, even physical objects in my home and how I cared for my body. But there was also a lot that was ADDED that I had no grid to even hope for or desire; deep spiritual friendships, community, new ways to connect with people, compassion, recreational pursuits!
I've always had a bit of a resistant to personality tests that put people into categories and types (I'm sure that statement puts me in some kind of category) I know some see it as a diagnostic filter, and perhaps it is of some use. Yet, the more I trust the nudges of the Holy Spirit in ways that feel so far off my map and my own sense "who I am" the more I feel these typings can be such a barrier to obedience and growth. So much of what I find deep joy and satisfaction in I never would have chosen for myself! It started as an act of obedience, an area I was resistant to! This is also why the New Age philosophies of law of attraction and manifesting what one desires through intentional thought always felt so flawed to me: I would never have picked the things in life that give me the most joy! I only have them in my life because of my surrender to Jesus and the leading of the Holy Spirit.
I've grown ambivalent towards any of these categories- similar to how I feel about astrological signs- I am aware they are out there and people want to use them to understand themselves and others, but they hold no bearing on WHO I AM. My goal is to stay soft, tender, and attentive to who my Heavenly Father says I am, and to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
The day I met you I tore up,
All my maps,
And my prophecies
“Lord, it doesn’t matter where I go
as long as You are with me”