Getting Uncomfortable in 2014: Trust Without Borders

The first leg of the tour has officially ended. We are en route to California as I type this. I can’t even quite wrap my mind around all the places I’ve been and things I’ve seen and people I’ve met over the past week and a half. Only two weeks ago that we departed for this adventure and it feels like a million years ago in some ways. Then again, it also feels like in the blink of an eye it will all be over and these precious moments that the five of us, my little road family, shared, will be but a memory. I wish I could hit the pause button and just rest here in this moment, in this RV rocking back and forth on a bumpy road in New Mexico, surrounded by people who were mostly strangers two weeks ago but now feel like my band of brothers and sisters.

I’ve learned a lot about myself over the past week and a half. Somewhere on this road between Washington DC and NYC and Baltimore and Pittsburgh and Virginia Beach and all the tiny towns that connect the places we’ve been, I have found myself…or at least a new version of myself. I set out to push myself outside my comfort zone…and push I have. In big ways and small ways. I hate public speaking. I shudder at the thought of it. I fear standing up on that big stage and going blank and having absolutely nothing sensible to say. And yet this is what God has called me to do. So here I am. And night after night…six nights to be exact…I have stood up on that big stage and shared my heart and my testimony and He has gotten me through it. With very few nerves, even! Now we head west to our two biggest events yet, in LA and Houston, and somewhere in the depths of my soul I hear His gentle whisper: “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

It’s funny how we took this journey to hopefully change some lives and inspire a few people along the way, and yet I feel like I will walk away from this experience the most changed. I’ve had to surrender my control issues on this trip. I’ve had to learn to be more flexible. To have more grace. To get dressed for live events in some of the most random places – LOL! To roll with the punches a little more. To trust God to show up when nerves get the best of me and my anxiety threatens to take over (it hasn’t yet, because He is faithful). To let go of how I think something is supposed to happen and instead just let it be what it is…or isn’t. And somehow in the midst of the long hours and motion sickness and complete lack of personal space and never enough sleep, I think I just might be happier than I’ve ever been. Because you sacrifice something for happiness. You sacrifice comfort and certainty and the wide, easy road and instead live in the beautiful wildness of chasing God right to the very edge of everything that seems logical and sensible. And along the way you have adventures that you never thought possible and dance to the tune of your own drummer and meet people you’ll never forget and allow your foundations to be shaken up and rearranged until you know that you can never, ever go back to the life of safety that once seemed so appealing but no longer fits the expanded borders of who you’ve become.

“Spirit, lead me where my trust is without borders….”

As we press onward toward California and the flat terrain stretches as far as the eye can see…for the first time in my life, I feel as though my life is without borders. My faith is without borders. My trust is without borders. And my dreams are without borders.

Join me. If you dare.