In This Moment

Greetings from Sneads Ferry, North Carolina! Gabrielle and I have now been here for a couple of days visiting our great aunt. It's kind of a full-circle experience for me because this is where I spent the summer after I graduated from high school. I worked at Rick's Restaurant as a bus girl and walked on the beach after work. It was a great experience although at times a lonely one. It gave me the extra shot of independence I needed before I went off to college. Now, four years later, I'm done with college and am preparing to move to Honduras. I can't help but believe that this road trip is the extra shot of independence that I need before I move to Honduras as well.

We've had a smooth trip thus far although this is really only our first stop. With only being a couple days into our adventure, I am already painfully recognizing my lingering tendency to be a control freak. As much as I want to be a very laid-back person (and can be outwardly a lot of the time), it is sometimes such a struggle with my brain to slow down, calm down, and be still in this moment. I am learning to constantly remind myself to let things go. As I told my dad before I left, it's a bit of a game I play with myself--the objective is to see how much I can let go. Sometimes, I win. Others, I don't.

Everything I'm reading currently--Keep a Quiet Heart by Elisabeth Elliot, My Stroke of Insight by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, and The Importance of Being Foolish by Brennan Manning--all carry the same themes. This is no accident, I'm sure, and is fairly normal within my life. It's one of the ways that God leads me to new lessons, by making everything in my life congruent. I think some of the impending lessons of this trip will be recognizing the areas of my life (however large or small) that still need surrendered to God, learning to meditate on God and live in the moment instead of always responding with that left-brain mentality of "what should I be doing," and dependency, dependency, dependency. It is starting to hit me now that there will be times on this trip where we won't know where we're staying the next day, who we will meet, or what God intends. But shouldn't this be the case for every day?

Our first day here I read a short chapter in Keep a Quiet Heart called, "Interruptions, Delays, Inconveniences" that was eye-opening and convicting. I'd like to share some parts of it with you:
Elisabeth Elliot refers to Emily Judson, the wife of foreign missionary Adoniram Judson. In the midst of lots of seemingly trivial activities and the frustration of thinking that she couldn't always begin what she felt was her real work, Emily remembered the importance of each small task. Using Emily's own words, Elisabeth Elliot says: She was ambitious for "higher and better things," but was enabled to learn that "the person who would do great things well must practice daily on little ones; and she who would have the assistance of the Almighty in important acts, must be daily and hourly accustomed to consult His will in the minor affairs of life" (139). Next, Elisabeth Elliot talks of another missionary, James O. Fraser, who was also frustrated with inconveniences and with all of the tasks that seemed to steal time from what he felt was his underlying mission:
I am finding that it is a mistake to plan to get through a certain amount of work in a certain time. It ends in disappointment, besides not being the right way to go about it, in my judgment. It makes one impatient of interruptions and delay. Just as you are nearly finishing--somebody comes along to sit with you and have a chat! You might hardly think it possible to be impatient and put out where there is such an opportunity for presenting the Gospel--but it is. . . . the visitor has to be welcomed, and I think it is well to cultivate an attitude of mind which will enable one to welcome him from the heart and at any time. "No admittance except on business" scarcely shows a true missionary spirit. (139-140).
This approach to work is so revolutionary to me. I am such a goal-oriented person that the idea of not forming some kind of loose agenda in my head of how much work I want to accomplish in a day is so foreign to me. But, why are those time goals so necessary anyway? Sometimes the planning of how and when takes up time that could have been used for work! In the time that Roy and I have been friends, I have always admired his ability to stop for people everywhere he goes. He's naturally much more outgoing than I am, but he usually makes it a point to make every single person he comes in contact with feel like the most special person in the world regardless of how much work he needs to do. I want to have that quality as well.

I am always amazed by the stillness of summers for me. This may be my last one, and yet, I am still so struck by how difficult I find it to not be productive. When I don't have work to do, I make work for myself because I struggle so much with being still. This was also the case in Mexico last summer. But, the truth of the matter is that God calls us to be still and know that He is God. This is a vital lesson for me to learn before I move to Honduras.

Elisabeth Elliot's chapter continues with a quotation from The Life and Letters of Janet Erskine Stuart:
She delighted in seeing her plan upset by unexpected events, saying that it gave her great comfort, and that she looked on such things as an assurance that God was watching over her stewardship, was securing the accomplishment of His will, and working out His own designs. . . . she was joyfully and graciously ready to recognize the indication of God's ruling hand, and to allow herself to be guided by it.

That sentiment is so beautiful. I want to see life's "inconveniences" as God's divine work and truly be grateful for them. I don't want to miss the complexities of God's pen in writing my life simply because they throw off my expectations. Elisabeth Elliot wrote in Discipline: The Glad Surrender:
A missionary must be humble enough to be flexible (93-94). I absolutely believe this to be true and have experienced this in various measures in Honduras. I am coming to believe that being a missionary is less about the work and how it all gets done and more about the heart of one's reactions to when life happens and the opportunities one chooses to see and seize in the midst of inconveniences or thwarted plans.

Jim Elliot once said, Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God. That is my desire in this road trip. I don't want to dwell on the past. I don't want to forecast the future. I want to learn how to live a life in wonder of this moment, completely dependent on the God who created it.

With Love,
Sarah