Following God

"Look! Look! Look!" cried Lucy. 
"Where? What?" asked everyone. 
"The Lion," said Lucy. "Aslan himself. Didn't you see?" Her face had changed completely and her eyes shone. 
"Do you really mean—" began Peter. 
"Where did you think you saw him?" asked Susan. 
"I didn't think I saw him," said Lucy. "I saw him… Right up there between those mountain ashes. Up, not down. Just the opposite of the way you want to go. And he wanted us to go where he was—up there." 
"How do you know that was what he wanted?" asked Edmund. 
"He—I—I just know," said Lucy, "by his face." 

- C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian 

I recently saw a chance to move to South Sudan for a year. I prayed about it. I applied. I prayed some more.

And ultimately, the decision I made was both one of the easiest and one off the hardest decisions I've ever made.

Easiest, because almost immediately after beginning to pray about it, I knew what the answer was.

Hardest, because I didn't like that answer.

The opportunity was perfect, and God said no.

Or I should say, He asked me to say no. Which was worse.

… I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to explain this decision to people when they ask. In fact, my fear of telling people that—once again—I was presented with this amazing-sounding opportunity and—once again—I chose not to do it, far outstripped any fear I had of moving to Northern Africa on a whim. I dreaded the disappointment (real or imagined) in the faces and voices of people who had been so excited for me to go. I dreaded the shame of knowing (or suspecting) that people I love and trust think I'm giving into fear, or "wasting my gifts," or making excuses. I dreaded not being able to defend my choice with any reasons that would "make sense."

I spent more than a week begging God—if indeed I was hearing right, that He didn't want me to go—to close the door Himself. If they simply didn't offer me the job, then that was that. No one could blame me. But He left the door open.

And it became clear that the question I've long wrestled with—what I mean when I tell God I'll follow Him anywhere—was deepening into something even harder for me to face than "Will I really do anything He asks, even if I don't see how it's important?"—becoming, instead, "Will I really do anything He asks, even if no one else understands what I'm doing? Even if I can never explain it to them, or even fully to myself? Even if people close to me misunderstand, or are horribly disappointed in me?"

I was being asked to choose: Follow what I and everyone else saw as the perfect opportunity, or follow God.  No matter what anyone else thinks.

I don't think that these will always be the two paths presented at the fork in the road. I didn't say no out of some morbid sense of self-denial: "This sounds fun, so obviously it would be more 'spiritual' to refuse it." I think God enjoys adventuring with us when we step out and throw ourselves into the things that come our way. And I think He has given me gifts and desires and experiences that lend themselves well to working cross-culturally. And I think that often the road that makes sense—that seems good, or exciting, or logical—is the road He leads us down.

But I also know that for me, in this instance, with this particular opportunity, with where I am right now, that saying no to South Sudan was saying yes to following God. 

And, despite my disappointment—and continued confusion about my future—there is a underlying peace in that which cannot be mistaken, or reproduced by the approval of other people.

So, here I am. Continuing to wait.

… I'm glad that God, at least, knows what's going on.