the strangest thing.

In the middle of the beginning of all the planning about Paraguay, the Lord asked me to do something I have never done before. He asked me not to ask people to give me money. I said, "What, Lord? Why? This will be a strange adventure indeed." I thought I would be okay when I had to fill out an application with my home church to be allowed to send prayer and support letters, even though I wouldn't be directly asking people for money, but I  wasn't allowed to direct the church members to send my support to the missionaries. So I had to backtrack quite a bit and restructure some things, and it ended up that Envision made up a trip especially for me so that I would have an official organization through whom to funnel the funds.

Because I had begun the process late to begin with, the setbacks that kept piling up actually
began to become quite nerve-wracking. Every time I sat down to write a prayer (not support)
letter, nothing would come out of my fingers onto the computer. The trip wasn't real in my head,
and so naturally it was hard to convey enthusiasm. Every time I would pray about the trip, the funds, my spiritual preparation, or just about anything else, there was this overriding sense of hopelessness about my prayers. It was like if this didn't happen, if I didn't end up in Paraguay, if the funds didn't come through, then everything I knew was a lie. I don't exactly know how this happened in my head, but somehow slippery-slope thinking had taken me from "if the funds don't come through, I won't get to go to Paraguay" to "if the funds don't come through then (a) God told me to go to Paraguay and then just didn't provide, or (b) He told me to go but He knew that the people he told to give me money wouldn't listen or (c) He didn't tell me to go and even though I'm asking for direction, He's not warning me that this isn't His plan.

Can you see how destructive each of those would be? In each scenario in, He was sitting in heaven with a cold drink and sunglasses, watching me suffer and squirm, and enjoying it! That's not intentionally how I pictured the situation playing out, but every time I thought of what His heart towards me would look like, that's what would come to mind. Now, I don't know where I got this idea of a Father-heart, but that's what I was working with. 

One particularly gloomy day, I was walking along, almost in tears, when my favorite professor (or second favorite, depending on the day) stopped me. He asked what was wrong and I told him the long version, because I knew he cared to hear it. He asked a number of clarifying questions, and then he said two things that I do not think I will ever forget. First he said that he did not think it was the best thing to think of my circumstances in terms of God "getting glory." I have thought about it for at least an hour since then, and I think he's right. When I start thinking of my life in terms of God "getting the most Glory," then I start thinking of myself as a pawn in His great chess game, whom he moves when and where He pleases, in order to obtain the greatest possible gain for himself, without regard to my care or well-being. 

The second thing the professor said to me was a question, and that was, "If you do not get to go to Paraguay, will God still be good?" This was the turning point of the entire situation. I went to the Post Office with the question still rolling around in my head, face still splotchy, to get stamps and send as many of my prayer letters as I could afford to send. I had $3 in my left pocket and a $10 bill in my right hand, and between the parking lot and the door of the PO, that $10 bill completely disappeared from my person. I distinctly remember putting it in my right pocket, and it wasn't there ten seconds later. Of course this caused a fuss at the counter when I became that awkward person who checks each pocket 27 times for money that is not there. I explained to the clerk, and she suggested I go retrace my steps outside, but I knew it wouldn't be there. In my head, there were only two options: God took it, or Satan took it. Either way, it was no longer there. I went out to look in my car, and there was nothing.  

On my way back into the Post Office, I had one of those micro-moments where you decide, in a flash, whether or not you are going to lose your sanity. I am sure some of you will say you have no idea what I'm talking about, so I will tell you, it is for real. When nothing is working and you are more stressed than you ever have been in your life (or so it seems) and all of the deadlines are coming to eat your soul, there's always one thing that happens. It's commonly referred to as the straw that breaks the camel's back, but I don't want to be the camel, so I won't call it that. Anyway, there's this split second where your subconscious decides whether or not it is worth it to completely lose your head over what just happened, and most of the time the answer is 'yes'. So, like I said, I had that moment on the way back into the PO, and within the nanosecond of deliberation, Job (from the Bible, the dude that all the crappy stuff happened to and he still said God was good) popped into my head. And there was this little inkling that the $10 (which had showed up in my school PO box from a benevolent stranger, marked 'Paraguay' with a sticky note) was not really and truly mine...and so my subconscious decided that a meltdown was not in order; if Job could do it, so could I. 

So I went in and bought as many stamps as I could with my remaining $3, stamped my letters, and left. I sit in my car, and my head is still saying things like, "Lord, what in the Hades was that? You do not make any sense. Why are you taking away my money?! I am just trying to do what you SAID you wanted me to do!! [whiney voice] Why are you making things soo difficuuuult?!" I To which He replied: "Lula, who gave you that $10? Didn't I give you that $10?" It was like He was telling me that He didn't need to use money to take care of me. Like He could provide outside of the dollars that I wanted to hold onto. At this point I can feel the frustration building up again, and whatever small voice of sanity (coughHolySpirit) caused me to think of Job the first time and then forego the meltdown the second time also caused me to think of these words: (from Job) "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away: Blessed be the name of the Lord."  I don't normally do things like this, but I agreed with the words. I said them, out loud. In the six seconds it took me to say those words, I decided that the professor was right. My heart settled into the idea that even if I never got to Paraguay, the Lord was still good. He still had a plan in mind that was better than anything I could imagine, and His heart towards me was still trustworthy. 

And I am not kidding you, eight seconds (exactly) after I said those words, the clerk from the PO was standing at my car door with a book of stamps in her hand. She unknowingly handed me almost exactly the number of stamps that I would have been able to buy with my $13, and she said, "You're doin' a good thing, Honey. Keep it up." I will not lie to you, I cried.

As if that was not enough, the next day I was cleaning for Room Check, and I found another book of stamps underneath some papers on my bookshelf. I don't buy blue stamps. I buy red ones. No one in the house had seen them before. 

The crazy thing about the Lord's asking me not to ask people for money was that it seemed like the idea would be: If I don't ask people for money and am trusting the Lord to provide, then money shouldn't even be a thing. It shouldn't even be on my mind, since He's gonna take care of it. But this is what really happened: the money didn't come in. It didn't. The deadline came and went and I died a little bit, on the inside. But once the deadline had come and gone, I had nothing left to lose in the Hope arena, and I kept sending out letters. I kept praying for provision. I decided that it would be better for me to be that person that thinks God wants them to go everywhere but has spotty funding than that person who sits on their couch all day with no aspiration. Because I have been the latter, and I am finished with her. Another crazy thing: God's plan seriously almost Never looks like what I think it's going to look like. 

Because the money didn't come in (which turned out to be God's plan, seriously), I moved my trip back a month. Enough money was in by the new deadline that I could buy my plane ticket. Because I moved my trip back a month, I went to Pensacola for a week after school got out to chill with old prayer room friends, cousins in the Marines, and cousins not in the Marines. I had absolutely the worst night of my life in absolutely the safest place I could be. I ended up in Pensacola House of Prayer, and a man I'd never met before told me exactly what'd been going on in my life. He told me that the lies I'd been believing about the Lord's heart toward me were just that--lies. He told me, without any prior conversation, that a new thing was coming, and that I was made to be a leader, both of which are current and true things in my life.
Because I moved my trip back a month, I get to spend time with my whole family before my little brother and sister go off to work at summer camps all summer, before my mother goes to Ecuador for her Spanish Ed Internship, and before my big brother goes into the State Trooper Academy. 

Because God is good, everything is going exactly as it should, and I am finally in a place of rest.

i think it just hit.

You know how, when you [finally] finalize big plans, your brain kind of starts planning the whole thing out? You start imagining all the details and playing through what each different facet could potentially be like, and then you start wanting it to be happening, right now? You know how you start to hate the waiting, and your brain never seems to be able to stay with you, where you are?

Two and a half years ago, I read a flyer about a Missions Training Boot Camp in the Costa Rican Jungle while sitting in the second most boring class in which I have ever been enrolled, and something clicked in my head. There was a very simple and very clear thought that just fell right into the top of my mind. From the moment that it took me to read the flyer until the moment I got on my plane, I knew that I was going to the Costa Rican Jungle to learn how to be a missionary. There was not a single doubt in my mind. My application was accepted without a hitch, my support letters went out early, funding flowed in so quickly that I didn't have time to worry about it, and my parents volunteered to pay for my plane ticket. Everything was easy-peasy. Little did I know that the training I had in mind and the training that would go on would be so entirely opposite... but that is another story for another day.

From the moment I was accepted to the missions training school, I was entirely confident about the raising of the funds, my [potential] ability to acclimate to a new culture, and my willingness to travel alone to a foreign country, meet complete strangers by myself, and then live with them for three months while learning and doing ministry. I think for maybe ten minutes I was terrified that the ex-marine from Texas [who would be the only other student] would look down on me for my body shape or lack of fitness, and that all of the people in the jungle would think that I was just another touristy American, fat and lazy, who came to gawk and take pictures. Those were my two worst fears. Neither turned out to be true, and both were lulled in the same day they arose. I'm harping, but I want to be sure you understand that the confidence I possessed may well have been the confidence of a lunatic [hahaha], and it was unbreakable.

Right before the end of Fall Semester, I saw another flyer. This one was for Paraguay, and the same thing happened in my head as happened for Costa Rica. I read it, and I began getting more and more and more excited, and then I said, "Oh. I know what it is. I'm going to go there." Not until 6 hours later did I realize that this was the same trip that my housemate and fellow tea-lover, Po, was using for her TESOL practicum. I got a little antsy that she wouldn't appreciate me impinging on her adventure, but as it turned out, she had been leery about going alone for such a long time, and had wished there would be someone she knew going with her. The more I prayed about the possibility, the more excited I got, until I couldn't take it anymore. I emailed the missionaries a long introduction, informing them of my interest and listing every thing that I had recently been in charge of or involved in, as well as several of my more commendable qualities. I think it almost sounded like a professional résumé. I don't know about them, but I was very impressed. (: Long story short, they really wanted me to come down, and they wanted to do anything they could to make it happen.

Just Saturday, I bought my plane ticket for Paraguay, and everything became very real in my head. At random moments of each day, my brain snaps back into focus and I remember how many days it is until I leave the country. I talk about it all the time. I've been dreaming in Spanish for four nights and counting. I've looked through albums on Facebook of all the pictures I took in Costa Rica. I keep smelling the air from the mountains between San Jose and Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui. I keep hearing the waves crash on the beach in the middle of the night in Cahuita. I feel the kids in Jobo, Nicaragua, tackle me into Rio San Juan del Norte. My feet can no longer deal with shoes. I have stopped caring for American food. My mom sends me to the store and I get ill that it's in an air conditioned building and it's not called El Supermarcado! in big flashy letters. In short, I'm not here anymore. And I'm so, so glad that the Lord made me hold off buying my plane ticket until now, because if I had gotten mine at the same time as Po got hers (near the end of the semester), I would not have passed my finals. He must know how I work, or something. (: