Step of Faith

Aloha, Friends & Family!

I made the announcement nearly a month ago now. On June 6th, less than two weeks away, I'll be leaving for Kailua-Kona, Hawaii again for six months. My plane ticket has been purchased, and the day is arriving very quickly. 

But there's one question that stands unaddressed. Some of you may have heard or read that I was going to be returning in January 2017. So what changed, you're probably wondering.

My faith.

Simply put, my faith changed.

Those of you who kept up with my blog posts while I was away for those initial three months in Hawaii know that I went through a lot of emotions while there away from home. I had great days; I had really difficult days. I had days when I thought serving the Lord in Hawaii was exactly what I wanted to do with my life; I had days when I doubted that maybe instead for the time being, I was supposed to be back in Georgia. I worked through a lot emotionally and spiritually during my time there. And I reached a point when I thought that the Lord was done using me in Hawaii and that I wouldn't be back for a while.

But something happened in my last two weeks in Kona.

New volunteers came.

I watched them so eager and wide-eyed with wonder at the beauty of Hawaii and all that it has to offer. Excited at the sight of palm trees and waterfalls and black sand and the ocean. Exploring the coffee shops and the gifts shops, learning all the best places in town.

And it caused me to slow down. It was a wake-up call. I stopped. I opened my eyes again. I stopped walking by the sunset on my way home and sat on the concrete wall again to watch the sun creep beneath the horizon. I stopped using my phone to text as I walked by the plumeria trees and I used my phone to take pictures instead. I stopped dreading the big hill I had to climb up to get home and I began instead admiring the view of the mountains that I had before me. I stopped taking things for granted and I began taking time out to reflect again.

And somewhere in those reflections, I discovered in my heart that I wasn't ready to leave.

Somewhere in those three months, the small town of Kona had lost its initial newness. It didn't excite me anymore. It didn't make me gape in awe. But I realized that it had become Home. My hometown is in Georgia and it will always be in Georgia. But quaint little Kailua-Kona, that three mile stretch I would walk every day, had come to feel like home. Cozy, familiar, comforting.

Somewhere in those reflections, I discovered in my heart that I wasn't ready to leave.

That my time in Hawaii was just beginning.

I was excited to come back to Atlanta. I missed my family and my friends and there were events that I wanted to be apart of. Celebrating my sister's 30th birthday at Disney World, attending my best friend's college graduation, going to Florida for a family reunion, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, our family's Fourth of July celebration, six family birthdays- including my own- in the second half of the year, the birth of my first nephew, Thanksgiving, Christmas, strawberry-picking, pumpkin patches and corn mazes, apple-picking in the orchard, rodeos, ballets, ice skating... All of my favorite things. I wanted to be home for them. And going home seemed the most practical financial decision. But I couldn't find contentment and peace in the reality of my leaving. 

I remember one Monday morning, I found myself praying in worship, "Lord, please send me back here in a month or two. Lord, please let me come back." And I suprised myself at those words. Where deep inside of me had that prayer come from? I was supposed to be home for the remainder of the year, right? I couldn't come back in a couple months! So I then changed my prayer to "Lord, please let me come back next year." In those last two weeks, I found myself questioning again my decision almost every day. And every day, I would remind myself that I didn't have the finances to stay longer in Kona.

So I packed my luggage. I cried profusely the morning and night of the day that I left until I felt exhausted from my tears. I boarded the airplane and I watched out the window as our plane gained momentum on the runway, breathless as I waited to feel the plane wheels leave the ground. And when they did, something happened inside of me.

In the moment that my plane wheels had lifted from Atlanta first going to Hawaii, I had begun crying because a wave of peace swept over my soul. I had never felt God more near to me or more real than I did in that moment. I had never felt more in His will. I felt Him smiling down on me, His heart full of pride in my obedience and my courage I found in Him.

But this time, when I felt the plane wheels leave the Island, I inwardly screamed. My lips were numbed- I couldn't utter a sound. But an unexpected wave of panic swept over me as I realized that I had left Hawaii, as I remembered how much effort it had taken for me to get there, and as the reality settled in my heart that I had no idea how or when I would come back. Something deep inside of me screamed as clearly as if the woman beside me on the airplane had spoken the words, "Get me off of this plane."

But I left. I was on my way back to Atlanta, I arrived the following day, and I couldn't have been happier to be home. Those first few days back spent with my family and my friends and in my church again were pure bliss.

But the Lord began drawing my heart back to Hawaii again.

Post-missions depression hit amidst culture shock (yes, as the fiftieth state, Hawaii still has a very different culture and pace of life). I wasn't happy here in Georgia. I cried a lot. I tried fitting right back into the place in our community that I had left, but I was a different person. God had changed me a lot in those three months, and when I couldn't fit into my old place again, I felt frustrated and discouraged. Misplaced and suffocated. All of the natural emotions to feel I was told. My family and my friends were amazing. They were so understanding and supportive and forgiving and patient as I melted down in tears on more than one occasion in trying to explain my feelings to them. I wasn't transitioning well. I wanted to be back in Kona serving on the missions base there again. I had never felt so alive and so much purpose and fulfillment as I had in that work. 

That's when three weeks later, I received an email sent by the director of the volunteers at YWAM Kona. There was an urgent and immediate need for volunteers to keep the base running through the summer. I could tell that this was not something that the director usually did, asking volunteers who had just left to consider returning or sharing the opportunity with friends who might be interested. I knew that it meant the base had a real need. 

God confirmed in my spirit in that moment that I was not supposed to be home until January. Immediately upon reading that email, I began looking online for flights. I had the passion; they had the need.

This was my island home. I loved that place. I wanted to be there to help take care of it. June. Maybe I could go back in June, I reasoned. But I looked at my bank account. It just wasn't happening. It wasn't possible. It wasn't practical or responsible.

It wasn't realistic.

I couldn't ask for money from anyone, I felt. After all, doing missions work in Hawaii raised enough questions as it was. Hawaii is not a traditional mission field. Then also, I wasn't technically going on a missions trip. I was working behind-the-scenes so that the missionaries could go out on missions trips. As I see it, the YWAM staff and students are the vehicle, the financial supporters are the gasoline, and as a base volunteer, I'm just the wheels, helping to keep things running. You don't ask for money for that.

I didn't see any realistic way that I could possibly have the money to return sooner than January. Not without wearing myself out by trying to volunteer on the base full-time and hold down a job in town as well. Not without returning to my former fast-food restaurant job where I was treated immensely well- goodness, I am SO thankful to my boss Tom Balsamides- but that was such a stressful job for me that I battled depression in my time there.

However, there was one obvious solution: trust God to provide. 

To me, that wasn't an option though.

I had heard crazy stories while at YWAM. Stories of miraculous ways that God provided the finances for students for their DTS (Discipleship Training School)- for even friends of mine. Ways that He provided for our Kokua Crew staff to serve as full-time missionaries. I saw financial miracles happen every day there. It was a common thing. When people stepped out in faith and obedience at the sound of the Lord's voice, He just provided.

There was something inside of me that wanted to buy a one-way ticket to Kona, Hawaii, to just go in faith, and to just watch Him work everything together. Something that told me that I didn't have to have it all figured out, but to go against everything my logical mind was telling me and to take a risk of crazy trust in my loving Father. If He provided for all of those hundreds of people I knew and saw and met... Why wouldn't He take care of me?

Fear told me that was stupid. 

Stupid, ignorant, irresponsible, childish, unrealistic. A fairytale.

Fear told me that God wouldn't provide for me too. That even if I somehow got the money for a one-way ticket, I'd get over there, I'd eventually run penniless from buying necessities, and that He would leave me there, unable to live there any longer and also unable to afford to come home. That even in the midst of my trusting in Him and leaving everything to serve Him, He would abandon me.

Fear told me that I couldn't trust Him to provide for me.

So I didn't.

I tried stuffing away that drawing on my heart back to Hawaii. I tried ignoring it. I'd go in January when I could save up my money again as I had last time and I could afford to go on my own, no trust involved. When I could go independently on my own two feet and when my time there could be well within my neat and orderly little control. When it was safe.

Some days I considered forgetting the whole thing. Those were the days when I would get frustrated and fight feelings of bitterness toward God. I saw people serving in the capacity that I felt passionately called to serve in. Why couldn't I too? It seemed unfair. Why would God put this burden on my heart, allow me to go there to Hawaii, move in that passion and taste the fulfillment of it, and then not allow me to go back and have to cope with that burning passion unfulfilled and suppressed in my heart? It felt like a sick joke sometimes.

Those were the days when I told myself to give up this foolish missionary idea and to get a well-paying office job as a receptionist, to support myself, to never have to worry about money, and to live a happy life here like so many other people do. Like everyone in my family has done. To be a "responsible" adult.

In the past month, I tried convincing myself of that over and over again, but every time, I just couldn't accept that reality. It felt like spiritual suicide to not do what I felt God was calling me to do. But I didn't see any possible reality of that ever happening for me. For some reason- maybe I didn't deserve it- I couldn't serve the Lord where and how my heart was burdened to. Some people could, but I couldn't.

It didn't make sense, but that's what I believed. 

Slowly my inward unrest began surfacing in my body physically. I began shedding more hair than I felt was usual. I began to feel achiness in my neck. I began having difficulty falling asleep at night. I would wake up often in my slumber. My dreams would be filled with anxiety and would be so vivid that in the mornings, I would be exhausted from my brain having never rested. I was always so tired. I lost my healthy appetite and I feared that I'd begin losing weight soon. I suffered my first tension headache. I began experiencing symptoms of subconscious stress and anxiety.

This all happened over the course of my first several weeks back in Atlanta. My time home began emotional and miserable, and I tried chalking up a lot of my inner struggle to merely the difficulty of transitioning back and my discontentment. But given time, I actually began transitioning very well. 

I fell in love again with my home church. I began exploring with my mom new places around Atlanta that we had never been to. I began spending time with my sister and brother-in-law, my girlfriends, my parents. I became accustomed to seeing every week at church my "second parents." I became comfortable again in family's house and our old routines, I lavished in having my own huge bedroom and bathroom again, in our long front porch, in the independence and freedom of having my own beautiful car to drive again. I stayed in touch with some of my best friends that I made in Hawaii. And I became very, very happy being at home in Georgia.

Yet, that pull on my heart, telling me to go back to Kona, still tugged until I recognized that it had nothing to do with discontentment or transition any longer. It was genuine and it was the tug of God.

April 22nd and 23rd, I attended a worship and prayer conference hosted at my church. It was the International House of Prayer (IHOP) OneThing Regional conference. And something happened in me that weekend. I was around other people who shared my missions and evangelistic mindset. My spirit missed that community of YWAM where I was surrounded by individuals who shared that same passion and direction of desires and goals that I had. Among the family of IHOP, I found that again that week in the worship, in the speakers' hearts, in the Great Commission/Missions breakout session I attended. Most days, I could distract myself and ignore that desire on my heart to go back to Hawaii. But in the midst of company that shared their own burning desires for revival and ministry around the globe, that passion flamed brighter and stronger and higher than ever, just as it had for two years when I knew that I had to go to Hawaii the first time. It had me weeping again as I used to. And I couldn't ignore it anymore. I knew it was real.

It was in the midst of my physical struggles from the stress of my inner unrest, and having slept very little the night before, that all of my thoughts and fears and desires tumbled out as I began talking to one of my good friends at the conference that Saturday evening. "Rachel, the question that keeps coming to my mind is 'Why not me?'" I told her. "I know that God will provide the volunteers they need... but why not me? They have the need; I have the desire. I'm young, I have the time and the energy and the passion, I'm unattached, I'm in the best time of my life to do this. When it comes down to it, apart from the money, I have all odds in my favor. I just don't have the money," I said. "I've told God that if He somehow gave me the finances, I would go in a heartbeat. That's the only thing stopping me."

"What do you think God's wanting you to do?" Rachel asked me.

I sighed, knowing well the answer. "I think He wants me to buy a one-way ticket and He wants to use this to teach me how to trust Him," I admitted reluctantly. But what if I went and He wouldn't provide for me? What if I got in over my head? What if?

"Julia, God's got you," Rachel told me. "He does."

We prayed together, and I drove home exhausted physically and spiritually. My parents prayed for me for a restful night of sleep, and I went to bed. For the first time in weeks, I slept through the entire night. I awoke the next morning rested, refreshed, and alert. As I drove to Sunday morning church, I listened to a thought-provoking sermon Rachel had sent me a link to on the will of God for our lives, and in church at the close of the sermon that morning, my pastor made a comment that hit my core: stop using the reality of your circumstances as an excuse from doing what God's calling you to do.

The reality of my circumstances. My finances. My distrust. My... fear.

I was convicted. I knew that was what I had been doing. And I decided that I didn't want to do that anymore. I didn't want to continue using my fear as an excuse to keep me from doing what I knew God wanted me to. I wasn't going to miss out on what God had in store for me because I was too afraid to trust Him.

Before I even left church that morning, I messaged the director of the YWAM Kona volunteers and made inquiries about potential arrival and departure dates I was considering. It all began falling into place.

I devised a plan. I really didn't want to go back to my former job and spend my last few weeks in Georgia stressed, battling depression, and with hardly any time to spend with my family, but it seemed the best way to make the most money quickly. It would only be three weeks, I reminded myself. So I would go into my old workplace, explain the situation, and pray that out of the generousity of his good heart, my boss would hire me back for three weeks so that I could earn the money for my one-way plane ticket. If he wouldn't hire me back for such a short time... Well, let's just say that I acted a lot more confident of where the money would come from than I actually was. Once in Hawaii again, I would volunteer full-time, forty hours a week, and I would work sixteen hours at a weekend job for a modest salary to pay for items such as a few groceries and toiletries and mainly, to cover the cost of my ticket back home to Atlanta in the fall. It would be a lot, working seven days a week without a single day of rest for nearly six months, but comparatively speaking, I figured missionaries on the foreign mission field put in much greater work and effort than that. I could do it and I trusted that God would provide me with a weekend job in Kona. So I decided to take the leap of faith.

Leaving at the beginning of June, just over a month away, plans and arrangements needed to move along quickly. That Sunday afternoon, I told my parents about my decision. Two days later, I went into my former job to talk to my boss, only to learn that he was out of town for the week. I'd come back when I returned from my weekend in Florida. Flight prices to Kailua-Kona were rising quickly with summer soon well underway, so in slight nervousness and uncertainty of finances, with the help of my dad, I purchased my flight ticket to Kona that Friday on my way down to Florida. I would leave Monday, June 6th. We charged the ticket purchase to my credit card. Or so I thought.

I returned home to Georgia again a few days later after a wonderful weekend with my sister and her friends, and that late Monday afternoon over dinner, my parents surprised me with a tremendous gift. I struggle asking for help, particularly financial help so unless it's offered, I usually don't ask. That said, with my parents having not offered yet to help me financially, I took the responsibility upon my shoulders of needing to figure out the expenses on my own as I had my first trip to Hawaii. For a twenty-one-year-old girl who's only been out of her parents' house on her own once for only three months, that was an overwhelming thought. It really was. I had to do this entirely on my own, I thought. But my parents surprised me with the announcement that they were going to pay for my plane ticket to Hawaii. The entire three hundred sixty-two dollars of it. My dad had charged it to his credit card and would pay it off for me.

I could've cried had I been able to stop smiling. Because not only did it teach me that God is faithful to provide and that sometimes He uses even those closest to us, but also because of the incredible love I felt from my parents through it. I had begun to feel very alone in my decision, but through that gesture, I realized that if I ever find myself in difficulty and if I fumble on my first attempt to stand on my own two feet, my parents will still be there for me. They have my back and they always will. It showed me that even though I know my parents want to keep me close to home, they genuinely want me to be happy and want me to pursue the plans that God has for my life, wherever they take me. That I have their blessing to go and to do and to serve. That even through the tears, I have their support. What incredible unconditional love that is. And they wanted me to be able to spend my last month enjoying and living and making memories with my family and my friends, those I love most. I'm not alone.

My ticket bought, my arrangements made, and the countdown of my time left here in Georgia for now becomes less every day. Every day the reality of my leaving becomes harder. I've never been so far away from my family for so long before. Every time that I think of everything with my loved ones that I'll be missing, my heart breaks. But I've been so much at peace again, and while bittersweet- there is so much about my life here that I'll be homesick for in those six months- I'm very excited to begin the work again that the Lord has prepared and waiting for me in Kailua-Kona.

So I trust. I take a huge step of faith for me, I surrender again to the Lord, and I begin to learn that the greatest maturity comes not by your income, your material possessions, or your career, but by the shaping of your heart and mind to imitate Christ's.

I depart for Hawaii again on Monday, June 6th. I plan to return late November, just in time for Thanksgiving. While the Lord has provided for my one-way travel expense, the need still remains for me to work a weekend job on top of serving full-time at the missions base. Many prayers would still be appreciated for that in its two-fold need: first, that God would open the door of opportunity at a (preferably stressless) weekend job where I can both earn enough income for myself and shine His light, and two, that He would give me the physical and mental strength, endurance, and energy to persevere working fifty-six hours a week for several months. Additionally, in the evenings there, I'll be working on writing my first devotional in hopes of future publication. As you can see, my plate is going to be FULL and I'm going to be in need of much encouragement, prayers, and lots of God's grace! 

Mahalo nui loa! Thank you for all of the love and prayers as I go forth again.