In The Belly of the Whale

So it’s 12:30am and my poor roommate is trying to sleep. But my brain has decided that it can only write deep and meaningful things in the middle of the night. So here it goes…


Two days ago, I was talking with a friend about how my summer had gone and how I had wanted to go one direction and God had a different thing in mind. She said it was like I had been in the belly of a whale and I think that metaphor fits incredibly well. I know I’ve been very silent about how my summer has gone, about China, about what God has been teaching me, and many of you are still wondering how it went… well, that’s because my summer didn’t go the way I wanted it to, I didn’t go China, and I didn’t want to learn the things that God was teaching. And it was hard coming to terms with it; and it’s taken me to this point be able to write about it, to tell people.

I’m not going to be super-spiritual, the perfect little missionary girl. I'm not going to try to make myself look perfect. I tried to go to China when God wanted me to stay home, so he had me sit in the belly of a whale for about three months until I cried out to Him and admitted that He knew what was best for me, even more then I myself knew. And it was not fun down there in the whale. It is hard and messy, oh so messy, when God invades your plans and ideas and inserts His own. It stinks of fish in there and there’s not a lot of oxygen. In fact, after three days (or months, in my case)…you’re pretty close to dying. But God knows just how much is needed to discipline us and bring us back to him and does not take us further than we can bear.

About two days before I was supposed to have flown out, when I finally accepted the fact that the rest of the support money I needed wasn’t going to come through, I crashed. I didn’t understand why God was doing this when I had really thought that He wanted me to go. I mean, I was going to save the world for Him and he said that he didn't need me. Imagine that! And when the money didn't come through, I wondered if He was really faithful…if I could honestly and completely trust Him to meet my other needs.

And in the next 6 weeks that I was home, God revealed himself to me. He gave me a minuscule glance into His character. As I cried and protested and pushed against Him-like a little child that is trying to fight rest when she's tired-He gently and patiently gathered me up and held me to His chest until I stopped struggling. Until I surrendered.

I wish I could tell you specific things that he taught me, but I can’t. There is just not words for it. However, I left the summer with a greater longing and desire to know this God who calls Himself my mother and father, lover and husband, who is more faithful to me then I myself am, who gives and takes away yet is still blessed. The One Who Is and Was and Is To Come. Yahweh.