Archive for July 2019

I didn’t see it coming.

Her sweet and strong voice through the FaceTiming phone had become a regularity in my irregularly sporadic existence. But this time, she was extra persistent in the texts.

“Debbie, when are you free? When will you be off work? How much time will you have?”

I answered later that day and showed her the clothes pile on my bed. Lightheartedly, I talked about how we, the previous roommates, hadn’t seemed to completely lose our “wow, we’ve exploded” tornado-ly clean and not clean ways. I was packing. Packing for another trip and expecting another one of our normal, generally light and deeply encouraging conversations.

But I stopped folding the denim and reaching for hangers.

“I called your parents and sister to make sure I should tell you.”

“What? What’s going on.”

“I just wanted to be sure, you know…”

“Yes, but you’re starting to scare me. What happened?”

She then told of a not-ex ex of mine who was the tip of the iceberg of pain that had led to many painful conversations and tears over the past year and a half, that sent me pacing back and forth till 3AM after crying and crying out because I wondered if the pain of ending, of leaving, of not having his existence exist with mine for hours every day would crush me. It was a piece in the post-grad seven months of healing, processing, grappling, praying, his present absence one of many large broken shards the Lord was using to make something new in the albeit breaking process of who I was, who I had been, where life was heading.

“Debbie, he asked to date me.”

And I felt a rush. Logical: Yes, yes, if the Lord is leading you two to date, then I will stand with you and pray for blessing. If you want my opinion, I don’t think it’s a good match. But do not let me stand in the way. Yes, yes, I just told you that I have worked through this, in a way God could only have done. And that’s still true. Yes, yes, I have compassion for him. Yes, yes, I understand why you don’t want to talk to him again. But reactionary: What is going through your mind when you pick up the phone, call Deborah’s best friend, and so casually try to start a relationship? Why did you think you could have this conversation without it hurting her and me? Deeper still: Why didn’t you call me? You could’ve, but you didn’t. Why am I never enough? What is it about me that makes people come in close and then pull away? Then, anger flaring, my hurt’s residual healing-tenderness jabbed. Then, sadness seeping in, stigmatic memories and the exhaustion of it all.

Not surprisingly, she didn't want to date him.

I texted, this time. Some of my closest Tennessee friends who knew the situation. Their responses were balm, but I was still a little caught off-guard-raw. I finished folding denim and grabbing hangers, packed into a personal item and put inside a Lyft with my roommate to lift us to gate B11. We sat beyond the gate in empty, sticky-blue, July-heated chairs, and I told her, she who knew it didn’t take a label to start to fall in love, that our egging house jokes now really might become a reality.

But she knew deeper, too.

The self-criticalness that had stayed with me even after I separated from him. The doubt that I should have could have needed to have done something better so that the result was true difference. The lingeringly suffocating insecurity that I’m too much and just not enough. And the fear, the deep ice-cold wind-gone fear that, since I struggle to let people into the deepest parts of me, that I’ll do my habitual, almost unintentional avoidance of connection, sitting in the backseat, letting others do the driving, running from relational risk subconsciously, and then having to live with the conscious effects of hating that I run but watching myself run repeatedly.

I knew deeper, too.

That this fear is long-seated. That I don’t feel good enough to be chosen. That when someone sees my intensity they’ll leave. That I present myself as misunderstandable. That I make people turn away. That I don’t know how to let them in. That I’ll be second-choice and back-up-plan till the cows come home.

I’m afraid. Afraid that not only will I maybe never be loved but that I keep myself from love and do not know how to love in return.

Back from the post-flight trip, I was sitting in the warm almost-globe-lit-warm room, me and two other student leaders and one student. Though our ration was 3:1, I was being hit maybe the hardest. What does it mean to be fully satisfied in Jesus? What does it look like to acknowledge the hardness of some seasons while also recognizing idols manifesting during that season that are making it harder? What does freedom mean?

I got in my blue infiniti and pray-cried again, something I hadn’t done in a long, long time. What if my heart fixated on and was fixedly satisfied in the love of God to wash over these insecurities? What idols—of even good connection—have I made? Abba, I’m in pain. Abba, I’m so heart-cry-deep tired of being alone. Abba, I’m scared, so so scared.

I’d written, the night before. “For love is the flipside of pain, dependence is the exit slide of doubt, and courage couples with trust.”

And maybe I’m learning just that.

We must be willing to feel the pain if we want to be rushed with the love. And love doesn’t just leave a deficit of pain but ushers in forgiveness and shields from fear.

We can’t truly depend if we don’t acknowledge the doubt of our tiny capacities to make our life be independently right: our haunting doubt that maybe we’ve messed everything up, that we could have done and been so much better. Dependency is a rushing release.

We can’t hope to move in the direction of relational connection unless we learn to trust enough to be courageous. To trust that people are pain-inflictors but worth the risk, so we courageously step toward them anyway. To trust that if all goes wrong, our core will not be shaken because it’s hidden in the cleft of the rock of Christ.

Simple, really, but I really simply didn’t see it coming.

Didn’t realize that a FaceTime conversation would bring me again closer to the feet and face of the Savior, crying out that I want to learn to love and be loved but am such a fumbling, broken being, crying out that I want to love the Lord with not just my mind but also with my heart, seeking for the idols I’m chasing be chased down and crushed, wishing for the transformation and breaking of these wall-barriers I’ve erected to keep me from not only being loved but pouring that love riskily out onto others.

Able to bring the change? I am not. But seeking? Here I am.

Father, ground me in your love so I’m not afraid of love. Refresh me with your truth so that your truth is all I focus on. Give me a heart of worship so that I can be fueled by love of You. Only You can bring the true transformation.

Maybe this love is what I’ve been searching for all along.

Barefoot and verbally bare-hearting, I paced under the guest-house awning, just outside the door that became mine and three other humans’ temporary home less than a week prior. In the Oklahoman dusk, I sent a torrent of excited, heart-searching words through the phone to my dad.

“Dad, it’s so much. It’s like my eyes are being opened again. I’m settling into these questions. What does it really look like to live not as an individual ‘pursuing my calling’ but under the greater having a role in the body of Christ?”

I was spending my summer surrounded by stories. Raw accounts of actual humans on this planet. The girl tortured in a Chinese prison camp because of Christ. The mother who spent over twenty years laying her life down on the other side of the ocean for the lost. The one smuggling Bible after Bible into “dark map” places where no one had gone because: the Gospel.

But to me, they weren’t just “inspiring stories” anymore. They were faces. Previously imprisoned Jenna she was the woman sitting to my left in the post-conference restaurant, asking about what Pad Thai actually is and describing her magazine preferences. Overseas missionary became Tammy, offering a ride to church and photographing my roommate and I laughing in front of her house’s bench-stool. Bible-smuggler became big-hearted Dad, talking about his kids’ shyness over Tajin-ed tacos. The faraway became near. The extraordinary merged with the normal. But the juxtaposed dichotomy of these similar dissimilarities still haunted my mind.

Do we have these compartments? Moments when our calling is being clearly lived out. Moments of crazy mission, and then Pad-Thai, photographing, family-focused sub-moments? How do we justify anything we do in reality of the pain and hurt in our difference-needing world?

I always thought big. Reading 10 Girls Who Changed the World as a ten-year-old, I’d heard the missionary stories, depicting living out God’s call. I was the little girl, taking denim-blue, pink-raised, embroidered-flower shoes off my feet at age five, sitting on the church step on my daddy’s lap as he left for another trip to Mexico. “Give these to a little girl like me.” I believed she was there, a mirrored version of my littleness. I knew she needed things, and my tiny heart felt compelled to give as much as I could: clearly, my blue-denim shoes would do the trick. I felt for her, and I felt moved to action.

But as time grew, I didn’t know what to do. So I talked, talked about these things. And Kasey talked back. From her young, single, female missionary perspective, I was desperate to hear counsel. Sitting in the dark brown, plastic wicker chairs under the fading Panera outdoor seating umbrella, I remember one snip bit she shared still so clearly. “When I came back from my first missions trip, I was moved. I wanted to do anything. I decided to sleep on my floor because the people I had been with didn’t have beds. So I wouldn’t either. But then, I realized sleeping on my floor would do nothing to help the kids hurting overseas. Really, it would just hurt my back.”

Self-inflicted back pain at no benefit to them. What a world we live in. But how, how do we act? How can we actually make a difference and justify anything we do when time is short and hell is real and we are really accountable for how we live our lives?

None else seemed to be struggling this hard. The rich kids at school simply talked about where they were going next on vacation. The poor kids at church talked about their cousin’s Big Mac eating back-stabbing ways. My friends focused on the next episode of New Girl. My extended family just cared about extending their eyes to politics. Some churches only seemed concerned with the production value of their Easter services.

I didn’t understand. Where was the Gospel-passion? Where was even daily mention of this person we said we were giving our life for? Why weren’t these the questions we talked about at church? Why did no one else seem to be bothered by this, and if they were, why weren’t they talking about it? Was I wrong? Do they know something I don’t know?

I found the urgency I had grown hopeless to ever truly find at Urbana. In a room more packed than possible, David Platt entered. And his voice cracked as his heart was clearly moved. But it wasn’t emotion without action. It was compassion from experience. He described seeing burial piers and bodies throw in the river. From a conviction-wrecked-heart-shell raw with the Lord’s work, he asked us: if we truly believe that every day, people are living and dying without ever hearing the name of the Lord, how are we not burdened and doing more?

And I didn’t have an answer.

Now, I sit, frustrated that I’m still asking these questions. I’m frustrated at how this deep restlessness has been undergirded my subconscious, something that’s even been twisted to make me critical of everything I do, disengaged from my life because I’m convinced that my life should be more for Jesus and that what I do and pray is never enough, critical of every choice I make and critical of my own criticalness. Initially burdened by the lost but now burdened by feeling like I’ve lost years of my life not living “good enough” as a passion-driven follower of Jesus. I went from passionate to floundering-to-find-what-to-do to critical because I hadn’t gotten it right to now tired, tired and directionally answerless, and struggling with the reality that, sometimes, I just don’t care. I don’t want the discomfort and disruption the answer might bring to my life.

Staring up at the persecuted church map that has been a part of my sleeping chambers no matter where I live and crying out on my knees by my bed for clarity for what to do next, I’m convicted. Who am I to carry around my frustration of not living my life for the Gospel “enough” when I’m not fully seeking permeation by the Gospel with my days? How can I live holding onto my lack of living-enough-for-Jesus instead of actually holding onto Jesus Himself? How can I continually bear these questions as an idol instead of accepting the love and forgiveness of the Lord and clinging to that as lifeblood?

The things is, I don’t have crystal-clear direction right now. I just have a lot of internal stirrings, but stirrings that feel like the wind of change.

And I don’t have an answer.

“What are you going to do with your life? What’s your five-year plan?” I don’t know, and I just don’t think it matters as much as people seem to think it does. I don’t want to plan my life as much as I want to be fully present and obeying Jesus in my days. I don’t want to work towards ‘self-improvement’ as much as I want to let go of my “good” desire to please Jesus and my hyper-critical-trying-to-figure-it-out-analysis and, instead, whole-heartedly focus on loving Jesus with my mind and daily actions. I don’t want to be the ‘best version of me’ as much as I want to lose myself in obediently serving others.

And I don’t want to overcomplicate things anymore. So I start today. Still restless in these questions? Yes. And still seeking, actually more profoundly than I’ve been able to before.

What does it look like to live on mission, spending each day for Jesus, knowing that Hell is close to us all but Jesus can be closer?

I’m starting here, where the season has brought me: in my deep need for Jesus because I no longer pridefully think I can do this in my own strength or rely on my own wisdom. I’m starting here, at the feet of Christ, steeped in my desperate need for Him. Praying, first:

Father! Center me in the center of you.

Father! Help me to focus on what matters.

Father! Teach me how to number my days.

Father! Show me how to spend my hours.

Father! Increase my urgency and keep me from inaction.

Father! Remove my stagnation.

Father! Renew my burden for Your people.

Father! Increase my passion for Your name.

Father! Expand my hunger for Your word.

Father! Help me to come to You first and give me Your eyes to see what to chase next.

Father! Widen my perspective.

Because I don’t know the answers, but I can know the one who does. And seeking, here I persist.

My black long-sleeved, long-panted bodysuit leotard encapsulated my bony six-year-old legs as I seemed to be the encapsulated essence of motion. I couldn’t stop. And I sure didn’t want to.

Two things captured my heart as a child. Okay, maybe four. 1) Penning tiny cursive e’s onto any scrap of paper I could find. I told my mom I was writing books, of course 2) Any sound of “worship Jesus” music. It could be the swell of the bongos and acoustic guitar at the light-dirt colored brick church or the sound-waved vibration spewing from the pink Hello Kitty CD player my sister and I maintained joint-custody over 3) My mom. The bond is special, ya know. 4) Chocolate milk, drank with a straw, blown into to make a cup-internal avalanche of bubbles.

My young heart truly had a lot in its life to love. And my affectionate passion for worship didn’t stop in my heart but compelled my feet to dance.

I look back, now, ay the home videos my parents recorded during those worship compelled motion days. It amazes me. Little Deborah’s feet would twirl for hours to songs like Joy William’s “Falling on my Knees.”

Hungry I come to You, for I know You satisfy // I am empty, but I know Your love does not run dry // So I wait, for You // So I wait, for You // I’m falling on my knees // Offering all of me // Jesus, You’re all this heart is living for

With time, worship remained a thread, but its strong part in the OG four-strand chord became buried. Just as my consumption of dairy-filled dark milk subsided, so did some of music’s passionate pull towards me. I decided that response to worship should no longer involve pink glittery headbands, leotards, and dramatic living room knee-falling reenactments. And I was probably right about that. But worship is more than just the posture of our feet and arms.

My mom fueled another thread-addition: the Bible. She’d have her brown-leathered Key Word study Bible, spine down, pages sprawling alongside her faux-suede red and black colored pencil carrier. She’d be studying. Deborah, we need to renew our minds (Romans 12:2). Deborah, we need to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). Deborah, only think about what’s pure and worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8).

My “mind battle”—or “Deborah’s crazy brain” as it later became endearingly referred to—was intense. Imagine an eleven-year-old who would tip-toe down the hard, cold staircase to her parent’s dark-green sleeping space. “Mom, I ate part of this sandwich my friend had already eaten at lunch today, and I know she’s feeling kind of sick, but she really wanted me to try it, and everyone was watching, and I didn’t want to not look cool or to make her feel bad, so I ate it, and now do you think I’m probably going to get sick, because we’re going to Minnesota this week, and I don’t want to be sick because I want to go to the State Fair and don’t want to ruin everyone else’s time, but now I probably will because I just was selfish and did something I shouldn’t have just because I didn’t want to look dumb, do you think maybe I’m going to die?”

Not even kidding. These types of pre-sleep induced frantic feet-motioned descents were bringing me down more than just physically. They were wearing on my mental peace. They were bringing me down into guilt that I’d done everything wrong and would hurt everyone I loved. They were ushering me into hyper-consciousness of everything around me instead of enjoyment of everything around me. They were making it feel as it wasn’t even safe inside myself.

As the years rolled on, I realized that just as chocolate milk had to become a habit that no longer had a home in me, this habit of checking-everything-with-mom couldn’t last. Somehow, I developed more or less of a kill-switch and attention-diverting options to try and get me under control.

My feet had danced to music. My feet had descended to paranoia. My mind and heart were moving towards disconnect.

I was so paranoid in my mind partially because I so wanted, in my heart, to live a life that pleased God. And I just had to check the shallow is-the-door-locked with my mom and the deep here’s-my-sin-oh-no-what-now with her, too. I needed the reassurance that it was all okay. But what wasn’t okay is that I took her answers of “Dad locked the door” and “There’s mercy and grace at the cross” and confined them to the corners of my mind, analyzing her analysis of my analysis, letting the fear-driven heart-pang of not wanting to disappoint God remain ruling, untouched in my heart but touching and coloring much of what I touched.

Eventually this separation of my mind and heart surfaced in other ways. I went from the music-dancing, flag-waving at church child to the cynical college student, more than knee-deep in a theology major, studying each Greek letter like it was vital to survival, internally scoffing at the healing prayers and “Holy Spirit” charismatic corner of the chapel space—even while songs in that same chapel moved even scoffing me to tears and made my feet want to remember their free, heart-engaged dancing days. I learned to live from my head because my heart held fear I didn’t want to acknowledge. I couldn’t trust others with it, clearly, but I also couldn’t trust myself. So headspace. Always. Disconnect the head from the heart.

Fast forward more years, and post-college Deborah is sitting in the therapist’s office. Alyssa’s fiercely kind eyes and incredible strong softness prodded with a gentle firmness. What would it look like if you learned to tap back into some of that deep care again?

My initial response was easy. It would crush me. My crazy brain hadn’t gone away. I’d been a little neglected, sometimes cared for, but generally turned off or turned on to run wild. If I cared, I’d collapse. If I reopened not only my mind but also my heart, I’d teeter back to the precipice of depression where I’d be strapped with all the ways I’m not helping others and the burden that I felt I was being to everyone and myself. I didn’t know how, I wanted to, I didn’t want to, I needed to, I should, I shouldn’t say should, I could, I might, I might not.

The feet that danced. The feet that descended. The head and heart that grew apart. The little girl who wanted to hope again. The hope who wanted the freedom of mature childlikeness once more. The one who wondered frantically wanting to turn back into wondering wonderously.

This is my desire // To follow You // Lord with all my heart, I worship You // All I have within me // I give You praise // And all that I adore // Is in You // Lord, I give you my heart // I give You my soul // I live for You alone // Every step that I take // Every moment I’m awake // Lord, have Your way in me

I started waking up, two hours before work took me, desperate to take myself back to the intentional presence of Jesus. And it didn’t take long. Worship. A space the Lord inhabits is the praise of His people (Psalm 22:3). And maybe it’s the key to reconnect. The words reached my mind, but they seemed to know a secret way to trickle down and sit quietly on near my heart, edging closer and closer with each beat

When I my mind can’t understand fully understand or justify what’s happening in and around me, I can still adore His unchanging goodness.

When my heart doesn’t seem like it can find the love for what and who is in my life, I can praise Him for Himself.

When I falter to reconnect my head and heart, I can trustingly worship Him to faithfully lead me there.

Always.

There is no fear, my heart, in loving the One who loves you beyond what your mind can grasp (Ephesians 3:18-19).

There is pure hope, my heart, in praising the One who can be trusted to lead you into all the places your mind can’t seem to discern to go.

There is a cure, my heart, for the restless brain frantics in worshipping the One who is above all.

And maybe this is the first and greatest step towards obedience. Worshipfully moving towards love again, with all our hearts, souls, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30 – 31). Any maybe one day my feet will remember how to dance.

It’s never been that simple.

I had climbed, white Van next to white Van, into my little blue-grey Infiniti. Driving from one end of the city to be swallowed by the other, I saw her green shirt and great big-comfort smile as she turned the gold knob to walk up mahogany steps. The Tennessee sun had been coating us with thick heat. Shielded and sitting now, in her upstairs apartment away from the summer’s scorch, we would now be coated. With conviction.

A summer had meant this before. Instead of Tennessee, it had been Oklahoma. Instead of drives across town, it had been walks across a tin-sounding bridge. I’d listen to Audible books on these walks to work, and somehow I’d stumbled into The Insanity of God. Nik Ripken’s story unconsciously transitioned from the forefront of my mind to a deep wrestling within my heart.

Conviction. From the way he responded, simply to the words in Matthew 28 of the Great Commission.

Conviction. From his action at his conversion, seeing the call of salvation as the call to obedience and ministry.

Conviction. From his simple choice to walk the streets of Somalia and ask where Christ is in such a world of pain, need, depravity.

Conviction. From his wholehearted choice to move his family, give up His comforts, surrender daily, and seek to know Christ more, often wrapped up in our steps of making Him known.

Conviction, leaving me pressed with so many thoughts and underdeveloped emotions, pressing to know: what does it really mean to follow Christ?

Now, here we perched, the book this time not flowing through Audible, but its content being deeply audibly discussed by two faltering humans trying to fall forward into chasms of greater grace.

We’d had these moments of deep-dive consistently. Driving hundreds of miles to and from the mountains, we opened our hearts to the heart-grappling of what it means to pray without ceasing, what it takes to love sacrificially, how it looks to live on gospel-mission. Being washed over by the salty Savannah sea, we wrestled with the problem of pain and the reality of hell, the cost of discipleship and the image of true mentorship.

Now, I sat, gray bean-bag holding me as I held up the moment of vulnerability feebly to her, telling of my current seasons of conviction recently clarified through a phone-call with my dad. Focus. Discipline. Perseverance. These are what I need right now. These, on the post-hardest-of-hitting-depression residue of inerted laziness. Of the conviction verging on condemnation deep pack-pressed into the center of my soul.

The Lord has a way of making us restlessly uncomfortable until we are compelled to move, to change. For better or for worse. Maybe some call these turning points, but I’ve crossed enough “turning points” to realize me, in my fleshy strength, turn and then turn right back around.

I call these moments wake up calls, reality checks. And I’m finally checking into the reality that I’m still grappling, and that grappling may simply be a way of life, and maybe even a healthy check to check that we still are loving and chasing after the Lord not only with all of our heart but also with all of our mind.

Conviction. From the lives of Jesus followers deep within pages.

Conviction. For the way I’ve been distracted.

What does it truly mean to follow Christ?

What does it look like, daily, to not only surrender my life to Christ but to wield my days in submission to Him?

What is the cost of discipleship for me in this season, the pinnacle points of where I start giving so much that it truly hurts?

What does it look like to be loved by God?

How does that love compel all actions?

How do we love people well?

What would it look like to not be afraid of evangelism?

How does my day change knowing that each day people are dying without ever having heard the name of Jesus Christ?

How do I live knowing time is short and the days are evil?

Answers to these questions? I could rattle them off without blinking. And that’s part of the problem. I’ve dove before, dove into them and so many more ponderings. I became so heavily overwhelmed. I dove too hard that I lost my ability and will-power to dive at all. I can face questions of what does it look like to be loved by God and move on, without a heavy helping of the wonderous weight of glory wrapped up in that question. I can face the question of the unreached reaching death before a servant laying down their life at Jesus’ feet, without laying down my stubborn and hard heart to be moved to tears—tears that there’s so much need, tears for the way I’ve let the burden of these realities freeze and crush me instead of accelerate me to compassionate action. I’ve grown used to flipping the question of how I love others well into how come they don’t love me well enough? It’s as if I’ve lived a million lives inside my mind, run these questions through and through till I’m just through—burntout and seemingly full of answers but full of little heart-reconciliation with the truth, little perseverance to keep seeking, hard.

But I was riding the wave the other day, the converging crest between conviction and condemnation, not sure if I was going to ride through or be crushed, falling in and circling in the dark, bubbly-suffocating water-sheets. I wanted to know that I was right. That avoiding these questions which seem to haunt me wouldn’t mean my days would be haunted with the regret of the time I thought wasted. That maybe there was a hope of forgiveness.

Forgiveness. Love? Maybe the flipside of condemnation is a disciplining yet powerfully tangible love that covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). But what they don’t tell you is that when something is covered, not only is something no longer seen, but something else is seen instead: love. The championing blanket covering of the death-wrought, grave-defying finished work of Jesus Christ.

It’d never been that simple.

It’d never been that simple of “hey, Deborah, dive into all your questions and you’ll be able to figure it all our and feel good about the way you’re living again and have a nice bowed-up, answered life.”

It’s been only simple. Only a simple start of being broken. Broken to my prideful desire to have all the answers. Broken over my sin of avoiding the questions because they felt hard and uncomfortable. Broken into seeking, seeking what it looks life to live with the world’s unreconciled pain in the reality of a reconciling Savoir. Broken into realizing the only way to not be broken, crushed, thrown back into overwhelmed-too-much-sinking-depression is to break into the scared hands of Jesus. Broken enough to realize that condemnation is not of You, but conviction is the settling place of refueling and clarity. That forgiveness means we are covered in compelling love to no longer just hear the questions and religious answers but to be moved to action (James 1:22). That the only way I can make a turn is by recognizing I cannot make any turns, but Christ has turned towards me and can turn me in the heart-level renewal I need.

For it’s simple that forgiveness covers us even when we stop seeking as we should.

For it’s simple that Christ is the greatest answer we need.

For it’s simple that God is working out His Sovereign plan not only around us but in us.

For I’m being broken and convicted and simply unsure of where all of this is leading. But I’m simply sure I’m learning what it means to not shut down in this state, like I so recently have, but to shut-up my worries and doubts and frantic-figurings to be quieted, stilled, and centered in the assurance of who He is even in the midst of a process I cannot fully understand.

Conviction, here.

But Him, also here, closer than I know.

I wanted this epiphany moment.

My black, swiss army backpack rested against the coarse zipper pocket pressed into the rigged light tan stones of the community commons. I had one black mock-van shoe pressed against the rim of the other as my left elbow rested against my left thigh. My right hand held a phone.

I feel like I can’t do this anymore. It’s like I’m in a dream. I don’t understand what’s happening.

It was October of my freshman year of college, less than sixty days into the rooms classes books people places conversations newness swirl of this next season of life. When I’m surrounded to things that are new, I’m learning that one thing isn’t new anymore: that this often means the Lord is going to strip away.

Mom, maybe I have a demon in me or something. I just want this all to go away.

So, I set up a meeting with the silver-haired, strongly soft safe soul who I respected almost more than anyone on that campus. As my porcelain hands were help up in exasperation, her smooth chocolate fingers closed upon themselves in prayer.

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened like I wanted it to. Yes, my mind was soothed by her presence and words, but no incredible supernatural burden felt lifted. No emotional weight felt suddenly eased. No demonic happenings emerged. No watershed moment. No big, lightbulb experience where I encounter Jesus on some incredible level so that my problems were suddenly solved.

I wanted immediate change, and all I was seeing was that nothing had immediately changed.

I grabbed my backpack and wanted to pack up and move away, go almost anywhere else, do something that would allow me to escape the reality that my life looked little like I thought I wanted it to and there was no easy fix.

My same mock-vans then carried me next to the smooth green grass, and I sat, right by the edge of the water, ankles crossed. I felt like Minnesotan breeze-sting push against my face as the water pushed against the small grained sandy shore edge.

Daily. It’s going to be daily.

And I didn’t want that. At all.

A daily choice to have to conform these thoughts of mine to those of Christ’s (2 Corinthians 10:5)? A daily choice to take up my cross and follow Jesus (Luke 9:23)? A daily surrender of my selfish desires and pride and anger and fear? A daily renewing of my mind (Romans 12:2)?

Naw, I wanted transformation. Instantly.

But now, years past my freshman year of college, I’m seeing that these instants occur more frequently. These moments where I feel the fragility of my flesh. The moments where I see I am so prone to wander, Lord I feel it.

I’ve cried for one giant breakthrough and been resounded with the fact that it’s learning to have the daily breaking—the daily breaking of anything that stands in opposition to Christ. But it’s a breaking into—the daily breaking into everything that Christ is.

Christ is the Rock (1 Corinthians 10:4).

Christ is the Savior (John 4:42).

Christ is the King (Matthew 2:1-6).

Christ has overcome the world (John 16:18).

Christ came to give life (John 10:10).

And that I have access to this daily?

Here I sit, in the true epiphany moment—that each moment can be a forever with our little epiphanies, epiphanies that we serve the Creator who has given us the inheritance with Christ, the help of His Spirit, the promise of His word.

Daily. It’s going to be daily.

I’ll take this infinity of epiphanies.

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