Night Lightning

Something Profound

When it’s hard to put words together in a literary composition of sorts to convey what one is learning or going through, it’s time for the writer to write from the heart. Sometimes things are just too profound for it to be tangibly grasped and written from the mind. That is where I have found myself as of late, and particularly now. It’s time to write from the heart.

I said goodbye to my best friend two days ago. I won’t get to see her again for another year. The experience itself and all that has come with it has been incredibly profound to me. She was here for a couple of days prior to that as I got to show her around Colorado and we had the blessing of each other’s presence. Yet the goodbye at the airport is probably one of the hardest I have been through for many reasons. As we prayed together before that, I found myself realizing that the tremendous blessing we have been given in each other’s friendship is what made it so hard to say goodbye. The level of depth we have attained in our friendship has created such a love and respect for one another, forging a bond that I think many people would envy. I’m reminded of the story of Jonathan and David when Jonathan stripped his armor and gave it to David. He loved David as himself. In many ways, I believe this to be a good picture of our friendship, because Elise knows me in so many ways and depths that others don’t. Her love has stripped my armor and I have been able to give it to her. God has brought us such comfort and edification through one another.

I realized later on that night that I have been focusing on the big picture of her leaving and the reality that brings for so long that I never allowed myself to see what I will miss and grieve. Throughout the whole process of God leading her to East Asia, I have been blown away by His workings in it all, from the grandest to the simplest. In the past several months I have had the blessing of seeing how God opens doors and leads His people through them, blessing and challenging them along the way. In this coming year I am so excited to see what He does with her; both around and through her, as well as within. I’m so excited to have my eyes be enlarged through her experience. I’m excited to see what God will do with our friendship as we will experience it in a different context and way than we have before. But the aspect of the different context really hit me the past couple of days, particularly when she was here. Because this next year, I am losing who has been my greatest companion to date. I am losing the one who has sought out my presence like no one else in my life has done before. I am losing the physical presence of one who knows me and understands me tremendously. I am losing the physical presence of my best friend.

I found myself thinking the other night about when our friendship really plummeted into the depth that it exists within today. And I realize now that the principle of loss in order to gain is prevalent. My friendship with Elise blossomed when I stopped trying to find what God was giving through her with John. It was when I finally let go and allowed God to bring what He wished in the friendship. It was finally accepting the blessing that God had placed on the table for about a year at that point. It was when I lost my own definition of what I believed should be found in particular relationships and friendships and let God define them instead. And God chose to bring us through a time of carrying each other’s burdens, teaching us about the greatest form of love in laying down one’s life for another. And God chose to bring us through a time in which we learned what it is like to walk alongside another in all aspects of life: from the joys to sorrows; the simple to complex; the everyday to monumental; preparing each of us for our next big eventual step in what it means to walk alongside a man. God has chosen to use our friendship to teach us and bring us through so many aspects and lessons of life that we have had the safety and security of learning with one another. Our friendship has been so great because God has been the driving force, the giver and sustainer, and the giver of blessings. We have experienced the depth of the love that Phileo can bring.

Yet the principle of loss in order to gain now comes into play in a reverse way. In many ways, I have to lose what I have in our friendship in order to gain something else. And it’s tremendously bittersweet. It’s part of this passage of life that I have long known has been impending, but now that it’s here upon me, it’s surreal. It’s like I feel the full immensity of loss and gain as well as being numb to it at the same time. Everything is changing. Everything is evolving in the ways that God has it set to, but being in the thick of it right now leaves me going through something profound.

I find the words I have spoken to Elise on occasion over the past couple of months to speak tremendously to me now. It’s that the changes and different situations in life bring us opportunity to know God better and in different ways than we have before. It’s an opportunity to propel deeper into the depths of who He is. It’s an opportunity to see His continued faithfulness not just in the situations familiar to us, but in unfamiliar, unwalked territory. It brings us back to every aspect of who He is. Change breaks us of the knowledge we have previously attained in other situations, propelling us into a situation in which we must wait and learn, an opportunity to come to His feet. It’s an opportunity to fully recognize and understand God to be the same yesterday, today, and forever, even in the midst of ever-evolving circumstance.

There’s so much interlaced in every moment God has me in, and the profundity of it is opening my eyes and heart to the greatness of Him. It’s such a mystery to be found in His greatness yet see His intimacy in bringing me through the things He is in order that I may know and love Him more. I can’t define “how I am.” I’m going through something profound.

And like I prayed with Elise in our goodbyes, often times what makes things hard is because they are good.

Clarity in the Ambiguous

I haven't written for a while most simply because I haven't really known what or had anything to say. That's different.

I've been in this highly ambiguous time in my life, if you will. It's not necessarily that it's ambiguous in itself (though I believe it is) but more so, that where God has me is highly ambiguous to myself. Even explaining it or trying to understand it as a whole seems to bring more ambiguity to something already ambiguous.

But God has been bringing so many elements of this ambiguous whole into clarity that allows me to see that it is all purposeful. One of those elements is that things are supposed to be ambiguous (tired of this word yet? ;-)) at least to some extent.

My faith cannot depend on the foundation of what I understand.

It cannot be about what I do.

It cannot be about the ways I find him in the ways I normally do.

My faith has to be rested on the foundation, love, and trust I have of God to be who He is when everything familiar in every way is stripped away. It has to be raw.

I think so often we take the things God places in our lives as reason to have faith, when instead, they should just be examples of the faithfulness we should already know.

That faith is that He is God, and we are not. That He has rescued us, redeemed us, loved us for who we are (sinners) and in spite of who we are not. That He never changes even in our perpetual fickleness towards him. His character alone displays all the faithfulness we should ever need to believe in Him.

Yet we have to choose to see it.

For me it's been this aspect of waiting and being still. It's highly ambiguous to me as it's contrary to who I myself am, but it's stripping me away of all the ways I do and experience things, simply because I am not doing them. It's leaving me with this raw essence of God and exposes my faith to be what it truly is. That is not always an easy thing, but it has been an incredible blessing. When I allow the foundation to be built that was always designed to be in place, it provides the structure for everything else. Nothing else wavers. Nothing else falls. Any question of faith or difficult things that is posed can stand on the foundation of who I know God to be. It's raw, exposed, just like concrete poured into a hole in the ground to make a basement or the foundation for the rest of the house.

Builders never start building anything else until that is set. Shouldn't we do the same?



I have written about waiting in many different forms this summer that sometimes it seems repetitive. God's showing me that it is thorough instead. There are many more things I could write about with all of it, but that too...

is to wait.