One year ago I was driving away
from Fayetteville, having no idea what the next year of my life would
hold.
So much has happened in a year, it
exhausts me to think of it. I don’t know the me that walked in my place just a
short 365 days ago because I am a completely new and different person. I didn’t know that when I got on January 9th,
when I got on a plane flight destined to San Diego, that that would be the end
of all that I had ever known. How sweet
is it now to look back and reminisce on the joy and the sorrow and the heartbreak
and the dancing and the laughing and the wonderful chaotic disaster that
Kony2012 and my semester with Invisible Children was. It’s humbling and really laughable to think
of the three months I spent in a van with Team Midwest and the 119 days I spent
as full-time volunteer. My mind
immediately flashes to the moment we heard Kony2012 hit one million views and
we drove into the sunset listening to Kanye West in Green Bay, WI. Or when Hayley walked into the basement of
the roadie house and yelled, “where my people at?!” as Saul, Abbey, and I
engulfed our team leader for the first time.
I think of driving away from Libertyville High School and getting the
call that Jason had a melt down and the times when we thought we had conquered
the world and the others when we couldn’t force our eyes to open because of the
tears. I won’t ever forget when I heard
Oyella Jane tell all of the roadies on Mount Soledad to take heart because we
were going to change the world. What if
I had believed her at the time? What if
I had believed Jedidiah Jenkins when he told me and 600 other desperate kids,
“the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones
who can.”? If I had believed them, would
it had changed me so much when I woke up one morning and realized we had
changed the world?
So much
happened in those short and beautiful five months. And so much has happened since.
Little did
I know that the greatest change in me would come when I got back to Little
Rock, after the greatest adventure of my life, and picked up the Chronicles of
Narnia for the first time. I had no clue
that in the short nine days it took me to read of the creation, journeys,
triumphs, failures, and destruction of Narnia, I would watch my myself go
through the same process. How faithful
is the Lord? When we question and when
we doubt, He keeps His arms open.
For the
summer months after I got home from San Diego and on the heels of Narnia, I let
bitterness and anger tear at me every day. I have been confused about injustice for years and I feel like I haven’t
been ignorantly accepting Christian reasons for evil without really searching
in myself first, but this summer it overran me.
To let sorrow embrace your heart can be good thing, but only when its
close companion, joy, accompanies it.
But without refreshing joy, sorrow crippled us and for months it did
just that in me.
In August I
moved back to Fayetteville and I joined in with the five guys I live with on a
week long trip to Montana before school started back up. Montana is a long trip away from Fayetteville
to say the least and I had the privilege of driving the night shift on the way
up. So in the middle of Wyoming with my
friends around me asleep and music playing at 4 in the morning, I let Jesus
know of my frustration. I don’t know why
it took me so long to ask Jesus the questions I had, instead of just writing
about them and complaining about injustice and all to my friends and family. I literally yelled and cursed and cried and
let my anger burn within me. After about
twenty minutes or so, I breathed deeply and I really believe the Lord put an
answer on my heart. I wish with all that
I am that I could say I heard Him tangibly say this to me, but in some ways I
feel like the Spirit gently (and often violently) whispering in my openings of
my soul, can be just as effective in my life than if I were to hear the audible
voice of God. I don’t know why evil
exists and I don’t know why injustice runs rampant but I do believe with all
that I am that Jesus is real. And if
Jesus is real, if He is at this moment who He said He was when He walked with
His disciples, then I can trust Him. Since
that moment, I have had supernatural peace about it all. I still have so many questions and am not
okay with how things are in the world or with the Church, but I have true and
undeniable peace. I thought it was only
going to be a momentary thing but here I am, five months later with that same
peace conquering my every life.
This
semester in Fayetteville has been a whirlwind of grace, love, and miracles to
say the least. Just as words fail me to
describe my incredible semester with Invisible Children, so they do with these
last many months as well. But I can’t
help but laugh out loud as I remember coming back from Montana with a new view
on walking in Love and what has happened since.
I am honored to see Jesus move in worship every Monday nights as
hundreds of students have come and sought the Lord alongside us in raw and real
community. I praise Jesus for seeing
salvation and discipleship and healing reign on our campus. I praise Him for allowing me to experience
the Church in a fullness that I have never before been able to see and how He
has started the healing process in me with loving His bride. The adventures in Mountainburg and White Rock
and Kansas City and all the beautiful nights that Jesus has taken me to places
I didn’t ever think I could ever go.
And how
gracious Jesus was to let this year all come to a head in Washington DC for
Invisible Children’s event, MOVEDC. I
went for a four day adventure to rally for the human soul alongside of my IC
family and my Fayetteville family.
I am glad
that 2012 is almost over. Changes will
always happen in life, but I pray for mercy that every year does not hold as
much dramatic change as this year did for me.
But truly, my friends, whatever the Lord’s lot for me, I will take. I am not guaranteed tomorrow or 2013, but I
do know that as long as I live I will love Jesus and love people. Through every question and hurt and curse and
dance, I will continue to run to the mountains because I believe I will fall
into His arms at the end.
I know this: If Jesus is not who He said He was,
I am to be the most pitied because all I am now , all I have been, and all I
will be is for Him and in Him. But I
also know that the Spirit has used 2012 to destroy me and make me and no matter
how hard I tried earlier this summer to deny Jesus, I found myself on my knees
saying, “Hallelujah”.
“If I say, ‘I will not mention Him, or speak any more in His
Name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and
I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”
- Jeremiah 20:9
