recklessness

In many ways, beginning internship has been a test of faith. Beginning on the actual journey of having clients is scary. There is no way around it. People come into my office (or on certain days, a nursery room “office”) with the hopes and anticipation of change…or not so excited to be there, but still looking at me, talking to me, expecting me to be fully present and aware, to see past what they are saying and see what is really going on, and in many cases, expect me to fix it, give advice, give something, anything, to hold onto and hope for.

I have anticipated this time since at least freshman year of college, if not a year or two before that. Including my two years of classes, it’s been around 8 years. I have felt the Lord leading me in this direction for 8 years. I’m not sure if I have anticipated and prepared for anything so much, except maybe that day when I say “I do” to my husband. It is sort of weird to say that at the “young” age of 26…it doesn’t feel like I should be old enough to anticipate something for 8 years. And yet here I am, starting out.

I won’t lie, so far I have had to really ask myself, “is this something I have just built up so much that I just expected to do this, like I almost had to since I’ve been saying I was going to for so long that I had better actually go through with it? Or is this something I am really enjoying and loving and feel like this is all I hoped it would be?”

It’s sort of like if you had read and heard about playing piano all your life and even got to touch the keys a few times and were just so excited to play well, until you finally got to sit down and play for the first time…and all it felt like was awkward, almost awful sounds coming from the instrument that you had seen so many play beautifully and seemingly effortlessly. Reading and hearing just won’t do it if you want to be good. You have to practice.

UGH. NOT what you want to hear, especially when others have to listen to you practice and may be affected by your strange, less-than-flowing sounds.

I guess this is a little how I feel…like that awkward beginner that wants to love this, that wants to be good, that wants to be helpful, that wants everything to come naturally and not have so many things to remember…but I am no expert and I have so much to learn and practice. I am as much on a journey as any of my clients.

Oswald Chambers has been so good this past week, speaking right to my heart. Today was no exception. In asking myself if I enjoy this work or if I heard God wrong all these years…Chambers reminds me of the way Peter was so certain when he saw the Lord walking on water until he looked around at the waves and wind and realized where the heck he was and then he began to sink. He took his eyes off Jesus.

“we step right out on God over something, then self-consideration enters in and down we go. If you are recognizing your Lord, you have no business with where He engineers your circumstances. The actual things are, but immediately you look at them you are overwhelmed, you cannot recognize Jesus, and the rebuke comes: Wherefore didst thou doubt?” Let actual circumstances be what they may, keep recognizing Jesus, maintain complete reliance on Him.

If you debate for a second when God has spoken, it is up. Never begin to say—“well, I wonder if he did speak?” Be reckless immediately, fling it all out on Him. You do not know when His voice will come, but whenever the realization of God comes in the faintest way imaginable, recklessly abandon. It is only by abandon that you recognize Him. You will only realize His voice more clearly to recklessness.”

So when I am overwhelmed by this client’s issue or my own feelings of uncertainty, inadequacy, or even utter cluelessness, I will, I am flinging it all on Jesus, at his feet, looking to him, recognizing him as the author, and therefore the finisher, of this work in me, both as his beloved and as his vessel.