So I've had a little time to process, or to chew on the brain food I've been accumulating. Late tonight I will have been home for a week. I'm still tired off my face, though I haven't exactly been afforded any days to just lay around and rest. I think my brain is happier that way, but my body is angry. Oh body, you'll get your sleep when we're dead and not a minute before.
People whom I have run into over this week have been asking me for little snippets of my experience. "Just tell me one thing", they say. I'm very happy to oblige, though anyone who's done this type of thing before knows that it is hard to pick on thing that can be amply explained in five minutes or less. I apologize if you hear the same snippet twice, I usually pick my favourites to share. So just tell me that I'm being my usual redundant self and ask me to tell you something different. I'd be glad to share.
My deep, thinking Christian friends have already started to quiz me on what God showed me whilst I was gone. And I think for a few team members that will be more simple to put into a few sentences. For quite a while I didn't think I could do that, and then God showed me a theme to our time together through my newfound love of cheesy metaphors.
You'll recall the blog entry about the stairs in Hong Kong, you may have picked up on my distaste for climbing so many stairs. This stairs thing kept popping up. It seemed everywhere we went there ended up being some element of stair climbing; be it the piping hot marble stairs at the Taj or the huge sandstone stairs in the dark of the largest Muslim prayer tower in Delhi.
After climbing the prayer tower steps I said out loud, "you'd think God was trying to teach me something with all these stairs..." And then SMACK it hit me, He was. Those who know me well know that although I am not deep, I am a thinker, the wheels are always turning in some direction or another. So it is with that that I often get ahead of myself and ahead of God, or at least the plans that He has for me.
The events of this trip really showed me how a step by step walk with God can work. I had said the words step by step before, but never had I really seen with my eyes how it worked. Ok, sure God has been doing it my whole life, but I had been blind to it. Being in India, or Ghana or West Hamilton, I don't know what is going to happen next, I frequently like to think I know what is going to happen in the future, but I don't. I go about making plans and expect God to just tag along. I never ask Him, I just expect. While I was gone I really saw the benefit and the fruit of telling my thoughts to God before I did things, and involving Him in the planning of events no matter how small they were. But I also saw how much he could work with nothing, and in the unknown.
One of the coolest things that became so apparent to me was the supply to the demand of my deepest needs. And when I looked back at my life I could point out so many instances where He had given me just what I needed, when I needed it. I think it is a great privilege to be able to look at your life through the lens of a new lesson learned and see how much you missed.
So now that I'm back I'm hoping to cling to that step by step mind set. I've got some tough courses, more work at the Pit, and I feel like I'm being called to be more involved at school. The thought of that makes me want to run and live in Brighton (kidding, Brighton is great), but then I remember that every step of the way God is with me. He will provide the tools to get through Greek and to balance my schedule. But its not even about the receiving of tools and gifts, but that through a closer relationship with the one who is my Saviour it doesn't matter if I give me all and still fail Greek, or get to busy and have to quit something - 'cause I still have Him. That is all that matters.