…And it won't be the last...

"It wasn't my first puddle," said my friend's Mom chuckling, "and it won't be the last, I'm sure." The rest of us looked sympathetically down at her now soaked black Bob's and tried not to think of what was growing in that milky red dirt puddle. Then it hit me,

"How can you really be sure?"

…………………..
Why is it that such seemingly minuscule moments seem to impact me so deeply? When I was in high school my dream was to become a published photographer.  I was going to publish a book, and the title? The Little Things. Throughout high school and into college God awakened my senses to the small every day "gifts" as author Ann Voskamp describes them. I wanted to capture them all with my camera and show the world, because I knew that so many of us walk right past the veins in a leaf so intricately placed, without even stopping to notice their existence. I too, in these last few years started walking right past such miracles and blessings without stopping to think about them- until this weekend. Those last 7 words my friend's mother uttered almost physically stopped me in my tracks.

Suddenly the entire world started spinning. I look around me, there are cars lining the small mountain road and I think, "What if one of them hit me right now?" or "What if we don't make it back to Xiamen tomorrow because of some freak accident?" Neither worry nor fear birthed these questions, but rather the realization that we cannot make the assumption that we know what the next day, let alone the next moment will hold for us!

You would think I, of all people, should know this, as my own Dad was taken home so suddenly my sophomore year in college. And I did know it then, but I never really grasped the goodness of this truth. I viewed the truth through lenses of hurt and fear. You never know what is going to happen, I would tell myself so live life to the fullest and leave no regrets.
And so my life's motto was born:

No regrets

None. No regret in your last interaction with anyone. No regret for what you ate or didn't eat. No regret in buying that things or not buying it (which my Mom tells me gets her into trouble sometimes :). No regret in the choices made, no regret in deed done or left undone. No regret in what was said or left unsaid. No regrets. I don't want to look back on my 20's full of regret (or any stage of life for that matter). I want to live life open-handed and with abandon- this is my goal, yet on that red dirt road in the middle of the Hakka Tulou villages, I realized how tightly I've closed my hands.

What closed them? I wonder. Fear. The word came instantly. Fear has been my teacher and constant companion. Fear of rejection,  fear of the phone ringing and hearing that someone else in my family has been taken suddenly. Fear that I would miss God's best for me, fear that I would lose my family because  my calling and choices have taken me half-way across the planet. Fear that someone might actually mean it when they said they loved me, not because of what I could do for them, but because of how we are truly like "iron sharpening iron". What was the cause for this dominating fear? Hurt. And so I have gone along building up walls of protection with the words No Regrets stamped all over them. Thinking I had done myself a great service, surely I would not regret something I never let myself feel or experience. I would be safe. I could be happy. Hold one, I would tell myself, just hold on a little bit more, they will leave and you will realize, they were just like all the others. But it's okay, because you didn't trust with abandon, so you're safe. It won't hurt as much this time.
Hold on, be strong, in no time you will be stronger from holding on. Just another day of this and then the sun will come out. They will listen to reason and understand…
Leave the conversation till tomorrow and explain it again, then they'll get it…
I'm missing something. The hurt strangles my joy and I realize I have a fortress. The temporary surge walls I've built around my heart, I realize are not just surge walls, but thick walls. Walls that keep me from seeing the white circle just inside the big brown circle on the wing of the white butterflies that have just recently emerged from Spring.  Walls that let me say things like, "I'll have tomorrow to fix that." "I've been hurt before and it certainly won't be the last time so get ready for the storm, look for the storm, protect yourself for the storm." Walls that shut the Light out in the name of holding on to truth. My self-proclaimed truth. Walls that keep Truth Himself out.

I've spent most of my life "filling in the blanks" for God. He allows us to live in some realm of mystery in that He has our days numbered and written down in His book, but we have yet to live them. We don't know the end, we don't even know the whole story- yet sometimes we fill in the blanks so that we can maintain some sort of control over our circumstances, or at least our reactions. But again, in filling in the blanks, we determine our own destiny. We determine our will is better than God's. We take our life into our own hands and proclaim our own wisdom and sovereignty to steer our lives. Such a life is foolishness! What is that verse from the New Testament?

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.  James 4:13-17

So I've grown up hearing. Yet how much of my life is really lived through this lens? The lens of Scripture: the lens of today, no tomorrow. My Redeemer lives and redeems my days and my hurts and fears, thank God. Thank God my Redeemer lives! But it's time to trade our sorrows, Christian. It's time to trade our sorrows for the joy of the Lord! Lay it down. Lay down the fear that keeps you holding on to your life,

For whoever whats to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake, will find it.   Matthew 16:25

Find your life, my dear friend, find it in Him. This is where freedom is. There is no fear where the Spirit of the Lord is. No malice, envy, jealousy, pride, or hurt. There is no room for such attitudes or characteristics. We call ourselves Christian, yet keep the good fruits locked up in our fortresses to rot. Today is the day to break down the walls and open the orchards of good fruit to all we meet. Let them taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh how would our churches change if we all opened ourselves to each other to taste and see that the Lord is good. He inhabits the very soul and being of His disciples. We can hoard or we can share. What will your response be?