Backdrop
“Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorites wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.”
C.S. Lewis—Mere Christianity
Anytime. Anywhere.
Over a decade ago the Lord asked me to be willing to follow him at anytime, anywhere. I was too afraid to say yes. (Those of you who’ve known me since I was little know that I was not at all what you might call a “bold” or a “confident” girl. “Insecure” and “fearful” were probably much better descriptors). The only thing I could say is that I was willing to be willing. I guess that was enough for Him, because ever since, it’s like I’ve been on a collision course with fear. I said then that I wanted to be the kind of woman and marry the kind of man that would pick up the life we’ve always known and start over if the Lord said, “Go.” He took me at my word and right away began to break me from the fears and insecurities that lured me to clutch tightly to safety.
So I went, straight out of high school ready to take it “one year at a time” and see where the Lord wanted me to go next. I started in Bellingham, WA. at WWU. Then I moved back to Seattle. I moved to LA. I moved to Portland, Oregon to go to Multnomah Bible College. The Lord has kept me at Multnomah for over 8 years even though I wanted to move back to LA and conquer the world right away! I guess I never imagined that His “Go” would sound a lot like “Stay” and that rather than running wide to a million places at MACH 2, I needed to be in one place slowly digging deep. I guess I never thought that staying would take greater courage than going. And I never knew how painful following could be—that following really meant a cross, and that a cross was not just a symbol of Christ’s death but also a symbol of my own if I am His.
When I moved to LA my prayer was that I would learn to suffer for Christ, picturing maybe a glorified death like a drive-by shooting where I could be the Christian hero dying to save the ghetto. My prayer was honest, but a bit skewed. What the Lord has been teaching me in the past eight years has had nothing to do with suffering for Him. What I have begun to learn is to suffer with Him—to die with Him and to follow anytime, anywhere, even when “yes” feels like an utter collapse—an irrevocable sacrifice of me.
In a season of about four years I experienced intense loss and pain. I was confronted with the deaths of many loved ones and illness hit my family hard. There were deep pains in relationship and deep pains in ministry. I was confronting wounds in my own history and wounds in the stories of others. I had many sleepless nights and the plague of a body wearied with chronic backaches and headaches. At the same time, I felt my passion draining, my dreams dying, my desires ignored and the constant demand for me to be or to give what I could not be and could not give. The Lord was asking me to give over my dreams of ministry, my desire for relationship, my dreams of how my passions and gifts would be used and even my conceptions of Him and His goodness. I found myself utterly exhausted and left only with a shattered hope and a broken faith. When all these things were gone what remained seemed to be only the shell of all that I knew myself to be, and so also all that I knew Him to be. It was my first, and probably not my last, “dark night of the soul.”
In disappointment and disillusionment, when my trust in God’s character has been broken, I have been learning to say “yes.” It seems that He has been asking again and again, “Bri if it costs you _______ (fill in the blank), will you still follow?” Even with clenched teeth, sobbing eyes and pounding fists he has asked me to say “yes” and offer to him the things closest to my heart. Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5 has been a challenge and an encouragement: “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died. And He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died and was raised again.”
So I guess I’ve been learning to die. But in death I have been getting just a small taste of the sweet fellowship of sharing His suffering, and so also a taste of the freedom of being raised. Christ entered my mess. The irony is that the very feelings of being rejected, forgotten and abandoned by Christ were the very evidences of His presence. For only in His goodness would He break me and only in love would He end my self-sufficiency. Death was my birthplace. I am alive again, but now with a tangible awareness of the frailty of my faith and the depths of His love.
Four nearly six years my “yes” has meant to stay when I long wanted to go. Not until 5 months ago did my “yes” finally mean “go”.
Five months ago I was told that my job as Student Leadership Coordinator at Multnomah was being consolidated with the job of a friend’s. Shock was followed by a myriad of other emotions. Though my friend and I could have competed for the new position, I knew almost immediately that this was my answer to prayer. At the beginning of the school year I began to sense that the Lord was releasing me to leave Multnomah, so I asked him to make it definitive. This wasn’t the sort of “definitive” I’d hope, but it was more definitive than anything else that could have happened!
I promptly began to freak out wondering what in the world I was doing. Seriously…I have a mortgage to pay for, the economic times are “tough,” and there is no one else to take care of me! I had no clue what to do when the door to home was shut. So I began looking for jobs in higher education because my experience and my Master’s degree are in this field. I was searching for jobs on the internet finding multiple opportunities that produced only a sense of defeat and compromise. The Lord stopped me in my tracks, reminding me that higher education was never my dream. I was anxiously looking for jobs because I was scared to death. Quickly and poignantly I knew that I could look back in 10 years with a life I never wanted and I would have chosen it because it was safe. The Lord asked me to suspend for a moment my fearful conceptions of what is practical and logical and to dream again. Within seconds I knew it was time to go.
Anytime. Anywhere.
