Seven Weeks.

That’s all that’s left until my anticipated departure date. That’s all that’s left until I hop on a plane and make my home in another country.

In the midst of being really excited and having intense freak out moments, I have begun to feel the pressure to get about a thousand things done before my time runs out. Because the time is sprinting away from me in a strikingly uncomfortable way. At the top of my list of things that need to be done before I can go is tied up with my ministry funding. I haven’t written much about the fundraising process here, but today it seems that we should explore what God is doing with that in me.

The last several months have been filled with major work on partnership development, inviting and solidifying partnerships so that I can move to this work in Germany with a team behind me who will care for my needs. It has been a wild adventure, and in the last few months God has provided a beautiful mosaic of team that is with me and is already contributing a significant amount of finances to this work. I’m still learning how to celebrate this well, but I am confident this team will be a source of joy for me in coming years.

There are, however, parts of my own mind that are broken. There is a stream of consciousness that runs underneath my actions and reflections that points out what still must be done, and as time moves on, that part of me adds more stress to the “work” I need to do. The task ahead still seems huge, and sometimes I’m unsure on how to even engage with it.

This past week, I have had a number of people try to encourage me by telling me that I need not worry, that they trust God will provide for my needs. That trust has been the backbone behind my work for the past several months, keeping me going in the midst of difficulty or despair.

And yet, sometimes trust wears thin.

And sometimes, my friends’ words echo in my head but don’t land in my heart.

I go back to work and begin slipping into a mindset that this all depends on me. Days get longer; work more intense. Prayer times begin to be filled with task lists. Joy is slowly sapped from my heart as the frantic monster of blind independence begins to wake from its slumber.

It all is hidden under the righteous guise of work and ambition. Yet, I know that my heart is slipping away from the trust it once knew. I see the disorder in me. I see the old broken parts of me that love control and perfection, those old idols that feign stability.

So what does one do? How does a person let those prayers of trust stop their pong-like movement and settle into a disposition?

In a not-so-coincidental moment of providence, I received an email from a dear friend who was working through some thoughts on embodied spiritual disciplines. He began to explain to me that he was starting to see how a strong movement toward trusting God has far less to do with repeating good theological principles than we might think. No, it’s not just a “belief” problem in the formal, cognitive sense.

Trust is easily displayed in our lives and disciplines because it is rooted in our lived theology. Trust is seen in our willingness and follow-through in participating in one of the top-tier, classical spiritual disciplines:

Rest.

Sabbath. Ceasing. Stopping. Quieting.

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore. – Ps 131

Seven weeks. When I look at what is left to do, it’s easy to think that rest is foolish and irresponsible. Maybe it is foolish, but since when do I trust my own wisdom over God’s? As my trust wears thin it becomes more important than ever to fight for rest.

And so in the midst of this fundraising process, I’m learning that sometimes trusting the ways of Jesus looks like hiding your cell phone in another room and watching TV with your younger brother.

I didn’t make the world, and it will continue on without me. I am not on my own in this preparation journey, and I have to fight to remember that in more than just a cognitive way.

So here’s to late-night popcorn and mid-day Art Museum trips.

Here’s to resting.

Still Wandering,

Tony