Three years and a few months ago, surrounded mostly by strangers, and with a tennis ball wedged between my back and the pew that was my seat, I spent several days staring at this gorgeous kaleidoscope of a window. I was with some other leaders from my church at a conference I’d committed to attend months earlier. An aggravated old lumbar fracture had made the 6-hour car trip to Greenville pretty miserable, and sitting through the days of meetings and teaching bordered on excruciating. The pressure of the tennis ball digging into my tight back muscles made it manageable”ish” to be there, and somehow freed up just enough brain space for me to realize my back wasn’t the only thing making me uncomfortable.
For months before this, and probably for a year or more, I had been sensing a call that I was scared of. That I didn’t feel at all qualified for. That I could not see how it would work practically. I had repeatedly tried to discount it as my own idea and hadn’t breathed a word about it to anyone.
Then one day a friend called me out of the blue because she woke up with an idea in her head she couldn’t shake. “I think you’re supposed to be a counselor. Does that sound crazy to you?” Yikes. Did it sound crazy? No. Terrifying? Absolutely. I promptly filed that little experience away and told God I’d pay attention if it came up again.
And then it did. Several more times.
Wise friends who know me well in varying contexts and who I trust implicitly named giftings they’d observed. They invited me to consider that maybe Jesus was up to something.
Sitting at that conference, I had a deep, visceral urge to flee…I wanted out of that space. I wanted to go lay down to relieve my back pain. But mostly I wanted to not keep hearing things that made it so unavoidably clear that the Spirit was speaking to me.
Moses approached the thick darkness where God was…while the rest of the Israelites stood at a distance (Exodus 20).
Abraham left his home by faith…even though he didn’t know where he was going (Hebrews 11).
Deep darkness and unknown destinations?!? Um, no thanks.
But I couldn’t ignore that every voice seemed to be speaking right into my fearful heart. They spoke about having the courage to trust how God made us. And moving in the middle of fear.
I hid my phone under my Bible and panic texted my friend that I thought she might be right about me becoming a counselor. But also that I was scared of the GREs and grad school. I didn’t have the money to pay for it. It would take a long time. And a laundry list of other reasons it was a terrible idea. She sent this back immediately:
It wasn’t quite the warm fuzzy response I’d hoped for, but it was the one I needed.
Three months later, I got accepted to school, and soon after that, I started working on my Masters degree in counseling.
Three years later I’m still working on it. It has been a long and hard journey. The pandemic is making it less clear where the finish line is, and the path forward is uncertain. And I’m not any less scared now than when I started.
While God is not uninterested in my fears, he also does not see them as an impediment to faithfulness. And I’m so grateful. He promises to be with me in the middle of my fear. And He is the one who will give me the faith to keep moving on an unknown path. And I can do it afraid.
Everyday Adventures 