The Mourning of a Great Adventure

I’m about to be pretty blunt here, but when I got home from Scotland last week, I had to have a week of mourning.  It’s dramatic, I know, but I found myself actually feeling really depressed that all my adventure and exciting explorations were over!  I was back in my home town, in a place that I love and with people that I absolutely adore, but also with the same old day in and day out experiences I’ve become so accustomed to, and stuck back in the same season that I was in before I left.  It wasn’t like I wanted to leave and live in Scotland, or anywhere else for that matter, but there was something in me still deeply longing to see things come to pass in my life that are yet unfulfilled.  Thinking it over, and having a pity party about it for a week, I believe the Lord showed me what was going on in my head, and as 2 Corinthians says to comfort others with the comfort God has given you, I think this may help a lot of you out as well.

 

Sometimes when we have great experiences, we want to pause time and just stay there, live there, and make that place our home.  When you think about it, it makes so much sense.  We were made for adventure.  We serve a God who created excitement and adventure!  If I think about the eternity that God has promised me through His Son Jesus, it makes my head spin and my heart swell.  I can’t even fathom the non-stop excitement and adventure that is Heaven.  The depths of God are endless…ENDLESS.  And they are depths of goodness and joy.  That is why to know Him is to love Him, and we will find ourselves throughout all eternity searching Him out.

 

However, on this earth, other fun adventures don’t always last forever.  There is pain.  There is the reminder of hope deferred.  There are yet-to-be answered prayers and unfulfilled desires.  Things aren’t always exciting and fun.  Sometimes, there is monotony.  You are required to keep your head down and just do the practical things of life like paying your bills on time, going to work each day, and keeping up with your weekly responsibilities.  Life can be tiring sometimes.  I realized that with my week-long adventure in Scotland, I had come home with some expectations of constant excitement and the immediate fulfillment of my dreams that were unrealistic.  I was never meant to live in an endless vacation on earth, and if I think that’s what I deserve, that’s entitlement.  But I’m not meant to have a mundane, boring life either!

 

So what do I do?  I have to pray and ask God for the right perspective, the perspective that HE has for my life.  I realized in my situation that I needed to repent to the Lord for my bitterness and resentment towards Him for the season of life that I’m in (again, I’m being blunt here).  When you don’t see exactly what you want to see, and things don’t happen in your life the way that you expect them to, you have to let go of your expectations and cling to what the Lord is doing.  Cling to Him.  It’s surprisingly easy, even if you deeply love the Lord, to fall into discouragement if you are focused on the wrong thing.  And what is the wrong thing?  The wrong thing is to focus on what God is NOT doing.

 

A few weeks ago, I wrote a song called Good & Better, the chorus of which goes like this:

“I will rest in what You’re doing, I will not be discouraged by what isn’t happening yet, cause You are actively pursuing, and You’re good and better than anything I could dream…”

 

The amazing thing is that the Lord gave me those lyrics personally as the perspective He wanted me to have in this season, and then two weeks later I heard Bill Johnson speak very similar words at a church I visited.  It brought so much confirmation to my heart:

“If you want to stay encouraged every day of your life, refuse to build your theology on what God isn’t doing, but on what He is!” – Bill Johnson

 

What a beautiful mindset to have – even when things aren’t going the way you want, you can lift up your desires to God and yet, still be thankful for what you DO have.  All of it is undeserved favor anyway.  🙂  He is so good to let us feel what we feel (our frustration with the monotony of it all), but then to speak truth and life into it (it’s going to be okay).  He is faithful to work all things together for good every single time.

 

I performed Good & Better, the song the Lord gave me, for my friends right next to the second oldest Lighthouse in Great Britain on Southerness Beach in Scotland!  Don’t judge the quality – the wind was a constant gust, my fingers were chilled to the bone, I couldn’t remember the chords because I didn’t write the song in this key, I choked on air at one point while singing, and I had to rush and do it in one take because we almost missed our bus back home!  All in all, this was an extremely special and hilarious memory that I will cherish forever, and I don’t mind the imperfections one bit.  😉

 

Here is the song, and I pray it blesses you in your current season of waiting well with the Lord in whatever it is you’re waiting for.  It may be painful right now, but IT WILL BE WORTH IT:

 

Here are the lyrics for your reference:

Good & Better, Written by Amanda Rassamni

Comfort is something I’ve been searching for as long as I remember,

My words they fail, but what I feel drags on,

Time’s wasting, the noise and action pulling me along,

Are You moving?

Though I can’t see what I want to see, I will rest in You.

If You make me wait so I’ll seek Your face, I will rest in You.

And I will rest in what You’re doing,

I will not be discouraged by what isn’t happening yet,

Cause You are actively pursuing,

And You’re good and better than anything I could dream.

I will wait on the Lord and I will rise with wings as eagles, I will.

I will wait on the Lord and I will rise.

 

Blog Pic: Southerness Beach in Scotland