grateful

It has been almost four weeks since I left New Zealand and returned to Virginia. I want to share some reflections from those three months on 'the Barrier' - how the locals refer to Great Barrier Island. 

I didn't realize I was so tangled up in religion and legalism. But words of life from beloved people like JT, a pianist with beautiful vulnerability, and Erik, a tender soul from the Netherlands, helped me see the webs around my mind and heart. In a safe, nurturing environment, I realized my powerlessness to do anything to bring faith or healing.  

But God met me in my brokenness, in that place of disconnection. I distinctly remember the morning when I was getting some deep revelations of His love regarding a specific time in my life fraught with striving, and I was sobbing. With tears and snot running lines all over my face and hands, I looked a mess. But I experienced Jesus' love delighting in me, right in that place of muddiness. And my friend Paul (from New Zealand) and I looked at each other's tear-stained faces, and celebrated the healing that God was doing in both of us. 

I remember one evening, struggling with theological questions. My mind couldn't make sense of the freedom, the mystery. But I was trying. Striving. I remember sitting in the lounge talking with Kora (Norway) and Bree and Andrew (Australia). Wrestling with my questions. And Bree just said simply, "You're OK." And I knew that was truth. Why did I need to have all the "ducks" of "what's Biblical" in a row? There again, my human effort to get to God. 

Oh friends, I have many journal entries trying to depict the breakthroughs of revelation that happened. Most of them begin with the question, "How do I depict in words what is revealed to the heart?" But more than journal entries were the quiet evenings drinking in the sunset over Karaka Bay with friends like Juuli (Finland) and Marit (Norway); deep sharing and hiking uphill through rainy NZ bush with Nan (Thailand) and Khanh (US); kayaking the surrounding bays with Marit, Juuli, and Amy (Hong Kong); eye-opening conversations with Betsy (Philippines), Juuli, Anita (US) and Luke (New Zealand); or stealing away for late-night star gazing from the pontoon. 

I'm grateful for Stephen Hill's thick Irish accent reminding me that any upward movement to get to God is religion, but true Christianity is God's movement toward us.

I'm grateful for the freedom I experienced, swimming towards dolphins in the bay, only to realize they were much too far away to reach. But then they came to me, swimming and jumping around at terrifying speeds. 

I'm grateful for the safe space my small group leader Michael created, to verbally process what was happening. To realize the incredible freedom I was walking into. 

I'm grateful for the dreams roused in my heart there in the quiet, and I pray the same would happen for you too.