learning.

The next memorable phase of this journey is one that was laced with fear and confusion. I started at UGA as a freshman and immediately got involved in the Wesley Foundation on campus (for those of you who don't know, Wesley is the Methodist college ministry at UGA). I LOVED Wesley. It was full of amazing people and wonderful opportunities and I really was able to connect to great things there. In the Fall, I decided to go on a Spring Break mission trip to Jamaica with the Freshman group I was part of. The trip ended up being so incredible...I got to help install a new floor in a church and play with adorable children and eat chicken foot soup (I totally ate a chicken foot) and experience really awesome revival in the tiny community where we were serving. BUT, I also saw extreme poverty and utter destitution in ways that I had NEVER seen before. I didn't know how to deal with what I saw...and even though I was 19, I still hadn't learned how to talk about my feelings or emotions...so I didn't tell anybody how I felt. I was realizing that there was such a need in the world for people like myself to serve "the least of these" (as Jesus puts it so lovingly) and I had a sneaking suspicion that He was calling me. But that scared me more than anything...and fear started to creep into my heart to stay. It's hard to explain, but there was a physical weight of fear that lived...on & off...deep inside of me. 

For the next eight years...from March 2004 to July 2011...I let that fear take up residence in my heart. It was something I silently dealt with and tried to ward off...but nothing I could do would ever make it go away for good. Now I'm not saying that it was a constant feeling of fear for 8 solid years...but it absolutely was around intermittently throughout that entire time. I know it's hard to understand, but I would compare it to a feeling of dread/restlessness/nauseousness/frightfulness/deep anxiety. And just to clarify, those feelings were NOT from the Lord. He did not attack my heart in that way. Not at all. That fear was from  a constant feed of lies from the enemy...and I couldn't get away from it because I wasn't telling anybody about it. Oh how much I have learned now about the beauty of opening up my heart. 

But as hard as it was to deal with, I also knew that God was preparing me for something great. I knew it. But I was afraid to take the next step with Him. And more than that, I had no idea where the next step should be. I felt paralyzed...so I just did nothing. There were too many choices, too many "good" things to be doing, and I was drowning in the possibilities. I was scared to make the wrong "wrong" choice...and therefore was living with an underlying spirit of fear. Not good. Not living the abundant life. But I knew deep down that the abundant life was going to surface. I had to make the effort to take the first step. God wasn't going to FORCE me to follow him. 


But this Summer is when the story comes together so perfectly. So magnificently.