The Big Fear

I have fears.

I don't like spiders, but I get over that because I fear losing sight of them more than seeing them.

I get nervous walking down dark hallways at night. 

I'm afraid of disappointment.

I hate uncertainty; it makes me antsy.

But my biggest fear is fear of The End.

And I don't mean death.

I'm afraid that I will reach my potential. That I'll hit a limit and that's it, there's nowhere to go from here. No growth. I've made it. All that's left is the status quo. Boredom. Stasis.

I fear reaching the dead end of the road. Because where do I go from there? 

This is why I shy away from my goals. Because once I have reached them, what then? 

This is why I procrastinate. Because deep down I think: I'm growing so much while I do this, where is the room to grow once I finish this task?

(Then I choose a new project. And that's what keeps me sane.)

Failure is my friend, and success is scary. Because I learn more from my mistakes than my accomplishments. 

What if life is like a computer game, and someday I'll complete all the missions? Then what?

I fear reaching The End. 

There is one thing that never fails to remind me that my worries are groundless.

Trees.

Trees just keep growing. They have a limitless potential for growth. Some trees have been around for thousands of years. The oldest tree in the world is 5,062 years old. It started growing when Pharaoh Narmer united Upper and Lower Egypt and Stonehenge was being built. And it's still growing today. Trees don't have an expiry date. And they don't have a date where they're like, nah, done, time to stop growing. 

Trees remind that God is infinite. He has no limit. 

And we were created in God's image. 

Poetry

I now transition from what's-Lyndall-doing-now? to a blog that's more creative.

To start us off, here's a poem I wrote a year ago. I'm still learning to live it.

New Things Are Coming

Flying

The week after DTS graduation, I stayed in Dunham. I spent time resting, praying, and figuring out what to do next. I knew I had to go back to Alberta, for a wedding and to work to pay my parents for outreach. But afterwards? I had no clue.

So after some praying, I hit on the perfect plan: Join the Media Team in Dunham, and share the story of the Chagossians. It was brilliant, since I love Quebec, Dunham, and Media. My hope was to work hard, gain support and come back in October for two years.

Then, on the 4th of July, I boarded two planes, and took off from Montreal. The first was physical, and brought me home to Alberta. The second was metaphorical, and I thought I knew where it was going. More about that later.

After about a month of being at home, Mom came to me and said she had some concerns about my future plans. One concern was that I didn't have a full-time job, and it looked unlikely that I would even pay back my parents by October, let alone have $15,000 for two years of staffing in Dunham. She said that I should re-consider my plans, maybe think about not even going back to Dunham. My world came crashing down. All the plans that I thought were so solid suddenly weren't.

And in that moment I realized that my future plans were just that: MY plans. Not God's plans. My intense desire for certainty after DTS led me to rushing ahead and planning out my life. Big oops. That was when I realized that certainty doesn't come from circumstances. Certainty can only be found in God and His unchanging character.

But it was an awful feeling having my dreams die. To be fair, God did warn me. In that last week after Graduation, Isaiah 55:8-9 kept coming up.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts."

I also had a prayer time with a couple other girls, to pray about our future. And both of them warned me that God could take me on a different path than I was expecting. I was scared, but they said that it was good, and exciting. So God in His grace warned me that things would happen differently to what I thought they would.

I had no idea what was coming next. I still don't. I have hints, but nothing definite. God has made it clear that now is a time for learning and growing deeper roots. That means I work part time, and spend lots of time reading and talking with God (and checking Facebook way too often. . .).

My plans are up in the air. I feel like I'm flying, only I don't know where this airplane will land. In the mean time I have a choice. I can sit in my chair and be annoyed that I'm stuck in airplane for who knows how long. Or I can enjoy the view, talk with people around me, read books, rest, and watch movies. I don't know where I'm going. But I know the Pilot, and He is trustworthy. 

God and Stitch Rippers

Today I lost my stitch ripper.

It's kind of a big deal for someone who sews. Especially since I had to pull out some stitching in order to fix a dress. I searched, but it wasn't in the usual places. Of course. That's what makes it lost.

I asked God, "Where is it?" I can't work on this dress until I find it! But all I heard was silence.

So I went off and did something else. Then I realized maybe I was asking the wrong question. So as I walked into my room, I said, "God, could you please help me find my stitch ripper?" Instantly, "Yes. Look behind the sewing machine." I walked directly to the machine and looked behind it, and sure enough, there it was. This conversation took less than five seconds.

The craziest thing is that God cares about lost stitch rippers. Not because of the thing themselves. But because it's important to me, and I'm important to him.

It's such a wild idea. God, the creator of Jupiter and winter and the Indian Ocean, God who parted the Red Sea and the rushing Jordan River, God whose holiness could frizzle us with one peek, this God cares enough about us -- about me -- to show a missing stitch ripper.

A Bit More About Mauritius

Let me be Canadian and apologize first. Sorry for not posting much about our trip to Mauritius. I didn't have the energy to devote to blog posts. And now, looking back, I see it's for the best. Some stories are best shared in person, not over the internet.

We left Mauritius two months and two days ago. I miss the people we met there, and I'm very grateful for the time we got to spend on such a beautiful island with warm, hospitable people. God taught me a lot in the time I was there, and the trip and lessons learned are continuing to impact my life.

One big lesson I learned was that I don't have to do it by myself. I had this mentality that I was responsible for many things, maybe even everything. And that's not true. I felt responsible for being responsible, responsible for saving the world. But that's God's responsibility. The world does not rest on my shoulders. I don't have to do it by myself. I have team members, family, friends, God. Other people are working for the same goal. I'm not alone in this. It was hard to let go of my independence, but it was so freeing knowing I didn't have to do it all!


And now, for a story from Mauritius. . .

The day we arrived in Mauritius, we were sure we had landed in Paradise.
Beaches, palm trees, warm weather, flowers everywhere, birds singing, banana trees in our back yard.
Look at this picture to get an idea.

Yep, Paradise. But that evening we were sitting outside eating supper. And the giant spider appeared. It was a female huntsman, about the size of  a 12-year-old's hand. It was crawling on the ceiling, and we couldn't squish it, because it was carrying an egg sac. If you squish the egg sac, you get thousands of teeny-tiny baby huntsmans. Ew. Aurélie and I were not impressed. Ok, we were shrieking and pulling our legs up on to our chairs. Spiders don't bug Céline. Eventually the spider ran away, and we nervously resumed eating supper.

Then it was time to go to bed. We were super jet-lagged, and very excited to sleep. Until we saw another huntsman in our room. Spiders in the dining area outside are one thing. Spiders in your bedroom when you're trying to sleep are another, much more frightening thing. Aurélie and I were freaking out. Even though we had huntsmans in Australia, I never liked them. To make things worse, the spider disappeared into the light fitting, and we didn't see it again. The thing I hate more than seeing a spider is seeing one and then losing sight of it.

So Aurélie and I decided to pray. We figured since God is the Lord of everything, He's also Lord over spiders, and He could tell the spider to leave. I also remembered a story about a girl in Costa Rica whose friend prayed every day that there would be no cockroaches in her bed, and there never were, even though the other people around her had bugs in their bed. So we prayed that the spider would go away, and that God would keep the spiders out of our room for the whole trip, and that we would be able to sleep unafraid and peacefully.

We didn't see the spider again that night, and slept well.

A couple evenings later, Aurélie found this:

EW! Aurélie very courageously carried the glass with the spider in it outside, where she flung the water and the spider as far away as possible.

So, you may say that God didn't answer our prayer. Well, He didn't answer it in the way we expected. Aurélie grew in courage that night. And here's the fabulous thing. The whole two months we were in Mauritius, we had a spider in our room only one more time. And that night was the night we were sleeping under the stars anyway, so it didn't count.

God answers prayer, even strange prayers from scared girls, asking Him to keep the spiders out of their room.

A Bit More About Ottawa

One thing I learned in Ottawa didn't seem very significant at the time, but I've since learned that it's more important than I realized.

I have read a bunch of books, heard sermons, and perused blog posts on evangelism. Somehow, I got the idea that true evangelism is always trying to work the gospel into every conversation, and sharing the salvation story with random people on the street. Asking questions like, "If you died today would you be 100% certain that you're going to heaven?" or telling people about sin and the cross and Jesus' free gift of life, or John 3:16 getting quoted a lot. I thought that I was supposed to continuously be scattering the seed of God's Word into people's lives. And since I wasn't doing that, I always felt vaugely guilty.

Consequently, when I started asking God who I should talk to, I expected Him to say everyone. When we were handing out flyers for Church on Wednesday at the University of Ottawa, I thought He wanted me to hand them out indiscriminately to everyone I met.

So I was very surprised when God said, "No. Don't talk to that person." or "No, don't give them a flyer."

The idea that God says "No" to 'evangelising' a particular person was completely new to me. It was freeing, but went against what the books and blogs and sermons had told me.

Now I see why He says "No". Firstly, I'm not responsible for saving everyone, or anyone. That's His job. My job is to respond to what God says. Maybe that person just needs a smile and a cheerful "Hello!" as we pass on the street. Maybe they're not ready to hear about Jesus yet.

And that leads me to my second point. People are in different places in their lives. They're individuals, with different hurts, needs, and preoccupations. One method of sharing the gospel doesn't fit everyone. God knows what each individual needs, and whether or not they're ready to hear about Him. If we go in with John 3:16 blazing, we might actually push that person further away from God. Maybe they just need someone to listen to them rant about how annoying their boss is. And in that moment, they'll get a taste of how God listens to them and cares about them. Maybe later they'll be ready to hear John 3:16, because someone listened to them.

Also, bringing people to Jesus is a team effort. God directs us. It's very possible that I'm not meant to talk to that person, because another Christian may be better suited to talking to them. Even if I do talk to a person, I'm building on a foundation that others have started, and I'm strengthening a foundation for others to build on. That person doesn't have to be saved RIGHT NOW, unless God specifically wants it that way.

Finally, talking to the wrong people at the wrong time sucks energy from us, energy that we need for talking to the right people at the right time.

To steal a quote from The Shack, our job isn't to be responsible, it's to be responsive. One method doesn't work for everyone. Listening to what God says, and following the Holy Spirit's leading are the most important things in evangelism. That, and love. Our aim should not be to convert people. Our aim should be to follow Jesus, and do what he says.