10 Year Challenge

I’m not one to jump on social media bandwagons, but I’ll admit I did go back and look at my first facebook profile picture. I didn’t even make a post because, honestly, I pretty much look the same! I still wear that coat. But oh, how life has changed.

I’m just sitting here in my living room, scrolling through youtube looking for some good new music, and I see a Phil Wickham video. He’s still around?

And there I am… It’s like the sound of his voice took me back. 10 years ago.

I was starting the second half of my Junior year of college. I’d just said goodbye to two close friends who were spending that semester in Hong Kong — the friends who’d introduced me to Phil Wickham’s music. How many trips did we make to the store late at night, those two guys, my roommate, and me, with that good music playing on repeat? How many evenings did we spend in the music building with our guitars, me trying to keep up with them while we jammed to the latest worship song? Those were good days.

They were days when I went to the school gym to walk on the treadmill wearing a backpack full of books. I was waking up every morning to go for a run around campus. Brushing up on my Spanish. I was getting ready for my first trip out of the United States, a backpacking trip through the villages of Nicaragua, taking the Gospel of Luke to places accessible only on foot.

I was tutoring remedial English students, practicing the piano two hours a day, running from my Shakespeare class to choir rehearsal, working in the nursery at church, leading the BCM worship band, having Bible study with girls in my dorm room… exhausted, but loving every day of doing everything I loved.

It was the semester before the summer I spent in Romania.

I remember a conversation on Instant Messenger (10 years ago, remember?) with one of those guys in Hong Kong. I told him I thought I wanted to be a missionary, and he answered, “What else would you be, a used car salesman?”

I remember another conversation with a girlfriend who’d already graduated, discussing our favorite subject (boys). “I think you’ll probably move off to some foreign country and God will just *plop* drop your husband right in front of you!”

How did they know?

I remember sitting in the shade against the wall of a hut on top of a hill in Nicaragua. I was looking over the river we’d just boated down, taking in the beauty of the rugged landscape, and writing thoughts in my journal. My feet were so dirty. Everything was so unfamiliar, I couldn’t understand most of what was being said around me, I wasn’t sure what I’d eaten for supper the night before… yet it all felt so right.

It was a thought that had been on my mind for some time, but somehow it felt different this time. Will you listen to Me? Are you willing to do this? Even if it means a life of unknowns? I felt the importance of that moment, heavy like my sack of books and light as air all at once, when I knew I was doing what I’d be doing for the rest of my life — being foreign, different, adapting, adjusting, not knowing everything but knowing the only thing that mattered. Knowing that God was with me and that He was enough. Depending on Him.

10 years later?

I’ve lost touch with most of those friends, although we see each other on facebook. I don’t wake up to run anymore.

But I’m still teaching English, leading worship, having girls’ Bible study, and still not very good on the guitar. We finally bought a piano. In Romania. With my husband who really was dropped right in front of me when I least expected, while I was busy doing all the things I still love. We’re also loving a new thing together now — a son.

I’ve been here six and a half years, and while I understand most of what’s being said around me, I still feel my difference. I feel my foreignness every day, still have to adjust and adapt. I’m still living every day aware that I don’t know everything, still trying to remember the only thing that matters — that He is enough. His presence is enough.

Still depending on Him.

I guess not much has changed, after all.