Heartbeat
If you have ever become suddenly aware of your beating heart - it’s fluttering, flopping, pounding, breath-robbing, rapid pace - you know how unsettling, uncomfortable, and bottom line frightening every beat can become.
I found myself traveling home from Guatemala on one trip with my daughter, Mae, on a “medical emergency” flight. Essentially, medevacing from Guatemala back to the States because she had become very aware of her heart and it’s doubled, erratic rate, sieged by fatigue, and frightened by the inability to understand what was happening to her heart and why.
As I sat on the plane the irony of the situation was not lost on me as Guatemala has made me uncomfortably aware of my own heart, of its beating, of its breaking, and of my inability to do anything about it.
Our very first trip to Guatemala and Casa Bernabe over four years ago absolutely wrecked me. In the days and visits since, the fallout continues. My heart has been cracked wide open to feel things that, if I am being transparent, I sometimes wish I could forget or at least put away for awhile. There are days when my heart just feels too much, when I become aware of what comfortable used to be and what knowledge really feels like. Comfortable was ignorance. Comfortable was ambivalence. Comfortable was caring, but from a distance.
This is bigger than just knowing and caring. This is about loving, so deeply, and fiercely, in a way that I don’t even understand and I can’t help but feel. Loving in a way that’s messy and scary, with more questions than answers, and with a dependence on God to hold it all together. But also in this uncomfortable, heart-feeling place, I have experienced more joy, pure laughter, and discovered a passion for something worth hurting for ignited deep within my soul.
“You are changing the world when you are changing one person’s world. Living radical isn’t about where you live - it’s about how you love. It’s about who we love. The success of loving is in how we change because we kept on loving - regardless of anything else changing. The value of loving is in the value of being like Christ.” ~Ann VosKamp
All of this comes at a cost. If you are going to give yourself over to this kind of world changing love for one, be prepared. It will not only change their world but yours as well. How hard is it to love, to really, radically, love, regardless of anything else changing? How hard is it to continue to pray when the answers seem so far away and your timeline doesn’t match God’s? There is a cost in this labor, this labor of love. There is a price demanded of your heart. This is not a place where you can join in tepidly. This is not a place where you can care, but from a distance. The cost to change the world for one is all of you. It. Will. Take. All. Of. You.
I wouldn’t have believed you if you had told me today would look like it does, not with the way this story started. Just be prepared if you decide to raise your hand and say “Oh, oh! Pick me! Send me!” Chances are good that you will get picked, but it will look nothing like what you think it will. I can assure you that when I first stepped foot on Guatemalan soil back in 2017, I had no idea where this train was headed!
If God has been tugging at you to do something but you’re hesitant because you aren’t “ready,” it doesn’t make sense, or you don’t have your 36-point plan drafted, proofed and put into place with the end game strategy fully defined, welcome to the club. John Ortberg says, “…’feeling ready’ is not the ultimate criterion for determining the places you’ll go. God says, ‘I have set before you an open door,’ not ‘I have set before you a finished script.’ An open door is a beginning, an opportunity, but it has no guaranteed ending. It’s not a sneak peek at the finish. If it is to be entered, it can be entered only by faith.”
What is making your heart beat a little faster today? What is God challenging you to say yes to? These are the questions where yes is scary, but no is terrifying. The question may be to go, or maybe it’s to stay. Maybe you have been burdened to open your home or your heart, to a foster child, a refugee, to truly love your neighbor in a global way. Maybe your yes looks like sacrifice, sharing what you’ve been given with someone who has less. I don’t know what He’s asking, but I do know that it will cost you. And no one else will really ever understand all of it - the great personal sacrifice of your time, your resources, the energy expended, the fears and tears, the hurtful words of those who question your yes, the way it has broken your heart and given you purpose, the stress and tension it puts on your family, the gray hair, the 10 lbs., the helpless pain of carrying another person’s trauma, the crushing burden and unspeakable joy it brings you. But God. He knows, He sees, and He is the only one who really counts. We say yes, because this is God’s plan. He specializes in the scared, the broken, the unlikely, uncertain yes-sayers to do Kingdom work for His glory. And He promises that you will never be alone while you are doing it.
As we move forward this week, we will bring you some stories and experiences that work at getting to the heart of what it looks like to serve at Casa Bernabe but more than that, the hope within this devotional is that you can explore some of the questions, hopes, dreams, and purposes of your life and help you consider your life and the path you are choosing every day.
Are you choosing the path to life – to God, or is life simply choosing you? Has whatever life brought you become your reality? Does your life feel more like you are keeping up with life’s demands rather than experiencing fullness?
What if you attempted to reimagine the way you do life? Chances are your faith needs you to ask yourself new questions and to act on new discoveries. As we visit Casa Bernabe this week we also want to look at four values, which are an undercurrent to a life of doing things that matter. Becoming a person who dreams wildly, lives differently, loves recklessly, and leads courageously all for the glory of God.