Adventure Begins, Comfort Ends
Disclaimer: This post was not written with ink, but with tears.
Ever think of the first explorers of the world? Could you imagine walking in their shoes without the modern medicine and technology? Pioneering into a great unknown, prepared to go even if it cost them their life?
Praise God I was born for such a time as this day and age, but the question remains the same. Am I prepared to follow Him, even if it costs me my life and all my comfort?
The Winds of Transition
The winds of transition have been blowing against the door that I’ve been knocking for a long time on. It is slowly opening, inch by inch. With my boots laced and backpack readied, I patiently await the adventure that’s to come. I have constantly warn my heart of the bittersweet truth:
To step into a new room, you’ll have to walk out of the one you were in. Seasons of transition demand us to learn the art of letting go.
Even though my yes was given years ago, the Lord is sifting me as I weigh the cost.
My emotions are a rollercoaster but my yes remains unshaken. Even if it costs me everything — and I have a feeling, and a knowing — it will.
The Ache and Gift of Waiting
In the last season, I had coveted the sending without being content in the waiting. This breaks God’s heart in such a deep way. Waiting is where intimacy grows like a wildfire. It’s the substance that will sustain you in the promise.
Waiting will mark you. It will deliver you. It will prepare you. It will produce oil within the secret place.
And when God hands you your marching orders, the well-waited season will make the sending feel like a demotion.
In the waiting, I have learned to love tension.
In the waiting, I have learned to love myself.
In the waiting, I have tasted and seen the goodness of God.
When Giants Move
I had a dream where two fathering leaders were standing next to me. The Spirit of God hits me in the dream, and a groan stirs within me. I can barely form the words to tell them, “I feel like I’m standing next to giants.” Then one of the leaders told me how much I’ve grown and found my voice. Instead of the old mindset of needing approval, I responded, “Yeah… I know. I have seen the evolution of Kat.”
God was revealing the places I have grown drastically — the evidence of the waiting, the crushing, and the surrendering of the last season. I didn’t need man to tell me, because God Himself was making it known.
In the past few years, what He has done in me, is doing, and continues to do — I have seen the evolution of Kat in:
Being delivered from fear of man, praise and rejection, and the approval of man
Laying down false responsibility through the obedience of moving out
Facing hard things (and surviving and thriving)
Quitting being my own worst enemy and believing the report of the Lord over my own
Letting yes be yes and no be no
Loving the wilderness and hidden place
Learning to love tension and the waiting
Surrendering to the instruction to stay
Dreams sometimes carry a many-fold meaning. I took this dream to the Lord and heard Him say:
“Watch when giants move.”
At the time, I only skimmed the surface: these leaders were giants in the faith. Their “moves” and decisions would displace giants in their region. I was simply honored to be privy to this mystery.
What I didn’t comprehend was the both/and aspect of God and the dream— the dream was also defining me. What I saw in them, I never believed about myself… until this move came. It reassured me that God has prepared me for such a time as this.
Just when I felt confident in one pond, He plucked me from the waters and re-homes little ol’ me into an even bigger one. I’m stripped to the bare minimum. What worked in the past is yesterday’s manna.
It’s a war between spirit and flesh. My flesh wants to cling to comfort, but my yes won’t cede. The piercing of a suddenly created a resilience in me — I won’t back down nor will I let go of the plans of God.
The Scroll and the Ask
My “suddenly” came as a surprise during a moment of fellowship. My heart collided with His as I was gripped with a love for His people — a people I didn’t know, in a region I didn’t live in. The desire I was too afraid to admit hit me like a ton of bricks.
I sat unhinged and speechless before the scroll that lay before me. My world unraveled as marching orders stared me in the face. It was an invitation to a great death scene where I would die and my oxen would be slaughtered. All that I had to do was to ask.
It’s true that we have not, because we ask not.
[Luke 11:9-10 ESV] 9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
So His still small voice came laced with an agitation to my comfortability.
“Ask Me.”
I swallowed hard, knowing the cost. The cup was bittersweet because I knew deep down if I uttered these words, there was no going back. I knew if I asked, in His goodness, He would do it.
“God… will you move me?”
I shelved it quickly — knowing if I held too tightly to it, it would consume me.
Days later, He whispered again:
“Kat, you didn’t ask Me…”
Was He deaf? Did He not hear me? I scoffed at His words, but then the understanding was revealed in my spirit, and I posed my question again, but with a slight revision.
“God, will You send me?”
There’s a difference between opportunity and sending. You could move, and God could bless it or He might not. When God sends — the sending comes with an assignment and provision.
Even though I felt God beam with pride at catching the revelation He was lying down, there was also an intensity in His eyes. He spoke a sobering warning:
“Kat, this will be hard.”
“Hard” is an understatement.
Here I Am, Send Me
Weeks passed before His confirmation came. I was playing piano for a church. There was a moment during service when one of the leaders began to release a corporate invitation. It was a summons from the Bridegroom to His bride: an Isaiah 6 moment. As I beheld the faces of the ones I deeply love, I heard the call — and I couldn’t say no.
[Isa 6:1-8 ESV] 1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for." 8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then I said, "Here I am! Send me."
I stood up in obedience, tears flowed as I echoed Isaiah words in song:
“Here I am. Send me.”
After that I was unable to play the piano, unable to sing. All I wanted was my mother. It just happened that one of the faces in the crowd belonged to one of my spiritual mothers. The weight of the cost hit me. The cost was steep, maybe too steep... I wasn’t letting go of a place, but also a people. I jumped off stage to allow my heart to mourn. In order to be sent, letting go is required. In-between the crushing and the love of a mother, God reminded me:
“Sometimes you have to leave a good thing to go to the next God thing.” —Steve Wilson
When Home Becomes Comfort
God, in His goodness, pointed out what I couldn’t see: The Well had become my good thing. My comfort. My home.
It was actually on another adventure the Lord continued to pull at this thread of false comfort. I was in a different city, sitting in my hotel room. I turned on the live stream from home and fell into an emotional pit. I have been on many trips, but I was more homesick than I’d ever known. I was unable to pull myself together. Before it could spiral any further, I cried unto God.
“What is wrong with me!?”
Faithfully He answered, “Because you’ve made it [The Well] your comfort [home].”
His words cut through my emotional instability. My heart remained broken for what breaks His. I mourned how I had grieved the Holy Spirit by making something else besides Him my comfort.
In my Authentic Kat self I constantly ask myself — how do you leave a place like that? How do you let go?
It is only by grace of God; His grace is sufficient.
I am only overwhelmed when I look too far ahead and try to handle tomorrow with today’s grace. I then realign my emotions and thinking by reminding myself to live within today’s grace. There’s so much freedom in that little tiny adjustment.
The letting go requires trust, or be willing to be made willing to trust Him in a deeper way.
And I must constantly remind of the good that’s yet to come. After all to die is gain. What am I gaining when I felt like I’m dying? More freedom, more joy, more grace, more of His love, more of His goodness and more of Him.
I know it’s not a goodbye — It’s a beautiful expansion, but proximity will change things.
Nothing will be the same.
I won’t be the same.
It’s risky.
It’s terrifyingly exciting.
It’s a journey into the unknown as Tennessee will no longer be the only home I’ve ever known.
It will be glorious because He is my home.
So cheers to adventure, and continuing to walk out of false comfort — And into the arms of my Beloved — THE COMFORTER.
Ready or not, here I go.
Soon…