Here I am, eight months stateside. I am missing the thrill of the unknown and the excitement of following the Lord blindly into something “new”. Though unprecedented waters (what the Race was to me), can often bring many emotions from excitement and anticipation to nervousness and uncertainty, I think that the unknown also leaves room for much expectation, especially when we sense the Lord beckoning us into it. We aren’t sure what the Lord is up to, but we know that God must be doing something. Why else would He switch up the narrative and call us to another town, or to a different job, or to reach out and be a friend to someone new, right?
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I used to be scared of the unknown until I began to witness the Lord’s provision and experienced first hand the truth of the phrase “He doesn’t call us where He won’t lead us”. My journey with the Race is packed full of moments where the Lord worked miracles from the very peak of interest in the program, the route choice and fundraising process, to the entirety the trip itself and even upon returning home early due to Covid-19. I can trace the Father’s hand in it all and am so grateful to have had this opportunity to journey with the Lord and watch Him piece each aspect together in His own beautiful way. I thank God for the way that He has given me a picture of His faithfulness through my experience with the Race that I can hold onto for the rest of my life.
I thank God that He has replaced my fear of the unknown with an excitement for it, and an eager expectation for what He would do through the process.
Somehow though, I’ve adopted another fear in it’s place, one that I’d even argue is worse than the first: A fear of what’s familiar. Of staying where I am.
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I’m working 8-5, Monday-Friday back at my first job, then coming home and babysitting a few nights a few week right now. I go to church on Sunday and Wednesday, and to Dairy Queen the majority of the remaining nights lol. On Saturday mornings I wake up early and go for a drive for an hour or two for no apparent reason with the sunroof open, an iced coffee in my cupholder and music blaring through my speakers.
Routine has become hard for me. Doing the same thing bores me.
And I think I got off thinking that it bores God too.
Truth is, without realizing it I have completely bypassed the majority of my time here since returning in March, and have treated it like an in between period while I waited on the Lord to speak our next crazy adventure into existence. I got lost in the mundane and honestly dreaded the every day activities that the Lord so faithfully presented me with day in and day out, regardless of the fact that I completely took these potentially divine moments for granted.
My sense of expectation went out the window due to the predictability (or seemingly so) of the season that I am in as I forgot to look for the Lord to move today in the name of wondering how He was going to move tomorrow. I’m realizing the weight of those words as I feel a tightening in my throat and a welling up behind my eyes after typing them.
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I was processing with the Lord this morning on the drive to work as I began to reminisce on the emotions surrounding being called into the unknown and the great expectation that I held in my heart for the ways that the Lord would move within that and as I was doing so, the Lord encouraged me by inviting me into this place of expectation with Him once again.
Not for tomorrow though, or for next year or for the next “thing” that He may call me to, but to what He’s called me to right now. And that’s to stay. To live in the mundane with the understanding that the Lord doesn’t get bored of my 8-5 or my babysitting or my rituals of going to church twice a week and then to Dairy Queen the other five days as long as I do it with expectation in my heart for Him to move just as mightily in the seemingly small things and all too familiar way of life as He did in the midst of the unknown.
The Lord encouraged me this morning that if He can move in and through me by uprooting me and placing me in another country that doesn’t speak the same language that I do with strangers that I’m going to spend every moment with, then He sure as heck can do it in my own country, in my own city, inside my own circles of the workplace and the precious babies I watch and the employees I encounter at the coffee and ice cream shops and the relationships that I have right here in this little town.
Friends, join me in taking the Lord up on the dare to be bold enough to believe that we will see Him move here, today.
I don’t know about you, but I’m praying for revival to break out, and for my friends to know God, and to see healings and miracles right here and I’m stupid excited to see the fruit of this expectation in the midst of the familiar!!!
<3, Meg
