Meeting of the worlds

Yesterday we got to hang out with Inge, one of our friends from YWAM Kyiv, here in Denmark! She's from here and is home getting some medical treatment, so we decided to hang out for an afternoon. Seeing her here and not in Kyiv really threw me for a minute or two. A meeting of the worlds, like one of those weird dreams where people from different places and time periods in your past are all together in one place. It was really great to hang out with her, though. She's really cool and very different from Torben and I, so it's always interesting to hear her perspective.

One of the main topics of conversation was the questions we have been receiving from everyone in America and Denmark - How long will you be in Kyiv? What's next? My head has been spinning with those questions since we left Kyiv in December. In America, we were so busy that I didn't have time to think too much about the future, but here in Denmark, our lives move a lot slower and I've been driving myself crazy. Thoughts and worries about the future have been flooding my mind. Our commitment to YWAM Kyiv is up at the end of the year and we just don't know what's next. For a future-minded person like me, that's maddening. But then I thought back to a conversation I just had with my parents.

My parents and two sisters are going to Africa for the month of April to help set up an orphanage there. I was a bit surprised, but it didn't shock me too much. So I asked my parents if they think this will turn into a long-term thing for them and my dad replied, "Well, in reality, we don't even know if we'll be alive tomorrow, so we don't know the answer to that." My mom called that a dorky answer and we laughed, but I thought about it later when I was struggling to once again surrender my future to God. He's in control. We could easily just go back to America and get jobs, but we only want to do that if it is what God is calling us to. And more than I want to be comfortable in a country speaking English and around my family more often, I want to be following God's call on my life. And I don't want to waste my time worrying about the future when I don't even know for sure that I will draw my next breath. All we can do at the end of the day is trust that God knows what He is doing. He is in control and He is good. I have to hold onto that truth even when my emotions are raging and questions are drowning me. I heard this Steven Curtis Chapman song again the other day and it brought tears to my eyes once again as I acknowledged the truth of it.

And the pain falls like a curtain

On the things I once called certain

And I have to say the words I fear the most

"I just don't know"

And the questions without answers

Come and paralyze the dancer

So I stand here on the stage afraid to move, afraid to fall

Oh, but fall I must on this truth that my life has been formed from the dust

God is God and I am not

I can only see a part of the picture He's painting

God is God and I am man

So I'll never understand it all

For only God is God