So as I mentioned before, I'm starting with Team Expansion soon. I have officially been accepted into Team Expansion which I'm super excited about! (They must not have read the psych evaluation too closely...) I already finished the 2 week training program called Launch and everything, so now it's on to the prayer raising and fundraising and life planning bits.
But let's go back a step. Launch. Like I said before, it's a 2 week training program for anyone who wants to work with Team Expansion. It's mandatory for everyone and I can see why...it was awesome. Seriously, some of the best teachings I've ever had on spiritual disciplines and missions and finances and faith and grace and tons of other things. I really learned a lot during those 2 weeks and some of it I figured I'd share...well, just because I can. And now that you're reading this you're probably curious and can't stop.
When I first got to Launch I was actually rather intimidated by...well, everyone. There were 8 of us there for both weeks and out of those 8 at least 5 had already been involved in long-term missions around the world. One woman had been a missionary for 43 years already. Everyone else was older than me by at least 6 years. And here I was, 23 and clueless, coming in with just a 2 month trip to Kenya under my belt. (Now I'd like to clarify here that I don't mean to belittle my time in Kenya...it was by far the most amazing experience of my life, but it seemed kind of puny when compared with 43 years overseas) After the first few days of hearing what everyone else had been doing with their lives, the ministries they were involved in, the souls they've saved, I started to feel kind of inadequate. I'd already been dealing with feeling like I wasn't good enough or qualified enough or spiritual enough to do this. I've never directly brought anyone to Christ. I've never baptized anyone. I've never led a Bible study. I can barely muster up the focus to read my own Bible half the time. Why did I think I was good enough to work with an amazing missions organization full of some of the most godly people I've ever met? I really struggled with this for awhile and thought a lot about what I was getting myself into and if I'd be able to handle it.
Then one day during training we were actually talking about this, feeling like you're not worthy of serving God. We were going through Mark 10:29 and Ephesians 6 and one of the guys said something that really stuck with me. He said, "When you say you're not worthy, you're saying Jesus isn't worthy." That was a huge eye opener for me. As soon as he said that I just felt a thousand times better. If we love Christ and are filled with him and the Spirit then by saying that we aren't good enough, we're saying he's not good enough. If we think we can't do it, we're saying he can't do it, because he's in us. If Christ is in my heart then insulting myself is like insulting him. It made it a lot easier to accept that it's not ME that's going to be doing great things for the Lord, it's God working THROUGH me. I'm just the vessel for His work. It takes a lot of the pressure off when you see it that way :)
Thing I learned #2. During one of our talks about support raising we were talking about our fears, things that make us dread raising support for our ministries. I learned a lot about faith that day, but one of the things that meant the most to me was when someone said "If it makes sense on paper, then you don't need God in the equation. You've got to have faith." This was huge for me as a super organized, systematic planner. I like to have everything all completely and totally together myself before I ask God to step in but when you're fundraising for a ministry that's literally impossible. I can do all the preparation I want, but when it comes down to it, I just have to have faith that God will get me what I need. He will open peoples' eyes and hearts to His work; I just have to do my best and He'll take it from there. Once again, it takes a lot of the pressure off when you realize there's nothing you can do and that you just have to give it up to God and trust that He'll be there.
I realize this is getting long. Sorry. Feel free to get a snack, go to the bathroom. I'll start again when you're ready.
Good? Ok. So before I get to the big life changing moment of the 2 weeks I'll tell you 2 other things I learned (but in a super short, concise way)
Super concise thing #1. It's hard to tell which voice in your head is the Spirit's. If you're like me, you have multiple voices (I really don't think they read that psych evaluation...) and some of them are telling you that you're a terrible person for doing or thinking whatever it is that you did or thought. And you might be a terrible person, I'm not here to judge that. However, what I learned was that God's voice, God's Spirit, condemns the sin or the action, but not the sinner, not the person. When I'm feeling bad about myself, about who I am, I have to remember that's not God. God doesn't break us down, he builds us up. He loves us despite our actions. I thought that was a pretty cool thing to remember.
Super concise thing #2. Ok this isn't so much something I learned but something that I heard and was awesome. On this particular day we were talking about spiritual disciplines and fasting and when fasting changed things. One of the couples there had been serving as missionaries already for a number of years and the wife had gone through a period of pretty intense depression, almost to the point of suicide. There was a 3 day period she said she was just consumed with this dark depression and could barely function. Then on the morning of the 3rd or 4th day she woke up and just felt better. Like, 100% completely better, no dark thoughts hanging over her head, no depression, just joy. She immediately went to go tell her husband and his response was "Good, I can finally eat again!" This whole time she'd been dealing with the intense depression he'd been fasting for her without her knowledge, just praying that God would bring her out of it. I don't know why, but that really stuck with me, too. I thought it was not only sweet, but incredibly awesome to have a husband who is such a good friend and such an obedient Christian, who would literally go days without eating to make sure his wife was ok. Anyways, I thought that was cool.
Ok....last thing. But this is the big life changing one so get excited :)
I have a tendency to get incredibly and unnecessarily anxious about silly things I can't change. Things that are far in the future or things that might never actually happen. It's slightly ridiculous, but true. To give you an example....nope. Not going to. I sincerely thought about it and even typed out a few examples...then I realized, no one needs to see the ridiculously crazy side of Kelsey so we'll just leave it at the fact that I get worked up over things I have no control over.
Anyways, Doug Lucas was talking to us about the life of missionaries, things we need to be prepared for mentally and spiritually, how life is going to be different, things like that. He said that when we go overseas the culture is obviously going to be different but it's up to us how we handle it. We can be frustrated that we have to stand in line for 3 hours to pay a bill or we can use that time to practice language skills with people around us. It all depends on our point of view, our attitude. He made us repeat the most important word I heard the whole 2 weeks: Acceptance. He said to picture our worries, concerns, and irritations like 2 circles, one inside the other. In the big circle it says concern and the smaller circle inside says influence. Inside these circles are all of the things we're anxious about, things we want to change, things we stay up worrying about at night. But we need to separate our worries into the 2 categories: concern and influence. The big circle is everything that we're worried about, but the smaller circle is what we can change. We need to focus on the smaller circle, on our circle of influence. There is absolutely no point in spending 3 hours worrying about the weather tomorrow or if someone's going to rear end my car on my way home. That's not my circle of influence. I can't change it so I need to give it up and ACCEPT whatever happens.
It's at this point we need to trust in God's sovereignty. Another thing Doug reminded me of is that God has something planned for us everyday--it's just up to me to find whatever "easter egg" is hidden in my life that day. There's something we can learn, something we can get better at, something we can understand more deeply every day, we just have to find it, find the positive in the situation and accept the negative for what it is.
Without going into detail (you are obviously a good friend for reading this far already and I don't want to abuse your fantastic attention span), I'll just tell you that this one idea, the circle of concern vs. influence, seriously changed my life. It changed what I think about on a daily basis. It changed how stressed I am about my future. It taught me to live in the present, not in the worst case scenario future that I used to dwell in. It's so freeing to actually realize that you have little to no control over your life. Scary? Yes. But so good. Because the person who IS in charge is the person I trust the most. And let's be honest, He'll make much better life decisions for me than I would make for myself...
