For the Ones Who Have Been Licked By the Flames

Me, attempting to jump at just the right moment

While in New Caledonia, we spent most of our days on campus at the University of New Caledonia.  Our hope was to continue efforts to establish a long-term ministry as there are no Christian organizations there and many students are not familiar with Jesus.  Or, if they are, they have a very vague idea of who he is.  We would walk around, engaging individuals or groups of students, asking them their thoughts on God, what it means to be a Christian, etc.  It was amazing their openness and genuine curiosity to learn more about Jesus. In total, by the end of the trip, 17 students had made decisions to accept Christ. 

The very first day we went to campus, I encountered a girl named Alice.  I was actually having a separate conversation with a girl, Kinsley, at one picnic table, with Alice sitting alone at another picnic table just behind us.  I had noticed Alice walk up and sit down behind us, but I didn't think much more about it. 

As I was talking to Kinsley about Jesus and the Bible, Alice piped up and called across the area, saying, "Yes, this is all true, what you are saying, it's all true."  I turned around to look at her because I wasn't expecting to hear this soft-spoken voice behind me.   She turned around and didn't say anything after that, seeming very shy, like she surprised even herself by speaking up.  We asked her to join us at our table, but she opted not to. 

Kinsley eventually had to leave, leaving just Shannon and Mike, two other members of our team, and I sitting at the table.  We invited Alice again to come sit at our table and this time she elected to join us.

She was a tall, slender girl, bundled up in a few layers, as it was a slightly windy and cool day.  She had a few straggling strands of hair hanging down over her right eye.  When she slid over on the bench next to me, it was then that I noticed her scars.

They covered most of her face, slightly skewing the shape of her eyes. Her hands were scarred also, her fingers just as slender as the rest of her body.

As we began chatting with her, we eventually made it around to her scars.  She shared that as a young child, she had escaped a home fire, but just barely.  Her body had been badly burned and her mother had spent hours over her hospital bed, praying for her, begging God to let her child survive. 

Alice plainly and boldly shared her confidence in God, that there's no way she would have survived that fire apart from Him and His sovereignty.  As she grew older, she continued to rely on that faith she had discovered as a three-year-old. 

I walked away from that conversation humbled and grateful to have crossed paths with this soft-spoken woman.  I was reflecting later and I just kept having this recurring thought run through my mind, "This is who the gospel is for."

Looking out over the student union area

The gospel - the saving grace of Jesus Christ and him crucified - is for the ones who have been scarred and burned by the flames.  It's for the ones who have watched their homes and their lives turn to ash around them.  It's for the ones who have breathed in the smoke of this life and gasped for clean air.  It's for the ones who have been fighting back the fire-breathing dragons of their past and the madness of their present.  It's for the ones whose lungs burn from lack of oxygen, whose legs threaten to give away beneath the heat.  It's for the ones whose hearts have been licked by the flames.

That's who the gospel is for. 

That's who Jesus is for. 

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick."  (Matthew 9:12)

The gospel is for the sick and the ones walking around with wounded hearts and scarred minds. 

Alice might have been the bearer of physical scars, but those scars reminded me that we all walk around with our own set of scars.  Most of us just don't wear them on the surface for the world to see.

And as grace would have it - the gospel is for you and all your scars, whether physical or figurative.  It's for your lungs that are screaming for air and your heart that been seared from the heat. It's for the ones who are desperate to find water to douse the flames of this world. 

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;  I have summoned you by name; you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.  When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.  For I am the Lord your God."  (Isaiah 43:1-3)

When we walk through the fire.  When.  We will walk through it.  We will have scars.  No one will escape this world without them.

Jesus is for the ones who have been singed and burned and licked by the flames.  He has walked through them himself.  He's not afraid of them. 

And for that I'm grateful. 

I'll Leave the Swimming to the Fish

Snorkeling has never been high on my list of things to do before I die.

I now know why.

While in New Caledonia, we took a free day to go off the coast to snorkel. I was looking forward to the adventure as I hadn't ever done it before. I don't have a great affinity for water or swimming, but I don't find it particularly dreadful either. I thought, "This will be great - no problem. Can't be all that bad."

We set out for the day around 8:00 a.m., with plans to go out to another small island off the mainland, drop anchor and then snorkel.

I shimmied into my wet suit, plopped on my goggles and then listened carefully during the tutorial on how to properly use your snorkel and flippers. The guide so graciously conveyed that swimming in the ocean was easy with your flippers, there's no need to use your arms to swim, just float along and then kick with your legs.

Bernard, our very French snorkeling guide

This is a lie.

As we get closer to jumping in, I'm getting slightly apprehensive as I'm realizing that I may have overestimated my tolerance for water.  I muster up the courage and take the plunge.  The water wasn't too terribly cold, thanks to the wet suit and hood I had on.

We slowly start making our way out from the boat, which is anchored quite a bit from shore.  I occasionally stick my face under the water, catching a glimpse of the world below.  Fish galore and coral everywhere.  I caught a glimpse of a white-tipped reef shark out of the corner of my eye.  The other group mentioned later that they also saw a stingray and a sea turtle.  The ocean was teeming with life and vibrancy.

The water was maybe 30-40 feet deep (but maybe I made that up? I'm not a good judge of distance underwater) and the guide would occasionally dive under, point something out, come back and then explain what he was pointing at.  I was doing okay at this stage, attempting to enjoy the view.

But after awhile, I realize that this whole flipper thing was not working so well and that I was doing the exact opposite of what the guide said. I was doing nothing BUT swimming with my arms.  I was like an anxiety-ridden cat flapping my way around in the deep end of the pool while everybody else was over there looking like Flipper the dolphin, graceful as can be, making it all look like they had lived their whole lives in the water.  Turns out I was not Ariel the mermaid in my former life.  

And the farther we went from the boat, the more stressed I got.  I could feel my body getting tighter and tighter, my breaths getting shorter and shorter.  Every time I would go to stick my head in the water, I would take this huge gulp of air, even though I had a snorkel on allowing me to breath.  I just kept anticipating getting a mouthful of ocean water.  After awhile, I no longer cared what was below the surface.  I just wanted to get back to the boat.  I was slowly losing the mental battle, getting more and more panicked.  I finally waved down our guide, Bernard, a very nice French guy.  I told him I'm going back to the boat and he said with his little French accent, "Yes, sometimes this happens with beginners, they get very exhausted their first time out."  And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, whatever, dude.  I'm over it.  Just get me back to the freaking boat."

So, I tread/paddle/float/drift/attempt to swim my way back to the boat, desperate to get back sooner but finding my legs were worthless and moving even slower because I couldn't use my flippers properly so I was burning energy like crazy.  I was ready to shed them and leave them in the reef for the fish to make a home out of.            

I finally made it back to the boat.  I stripped the flippers, ripped off the goggles and snorkel, heaved myself onto the boat deck, my uncoordinated body nearly collapsing right then and there. Nobody else had made it back yet as they were all still out snorkeling and have a grand ol' time.

This is me, post-snorkeling debacle

Meanwhile, I made a beeline for the bathroom.

And proceed to throw up everything I ate for breakfast that morning, including an amazing chocolate croissant.

I think I had myself so stressed and so anxious that I made myself sick.  The good news was, though, I felt ten times better after that.

The rest of the group finally came back shortly after my stomach had made peace with the rest of my body.  I told them I came back early due to motion sickness and that I just wasn't feeling all that great.  I didn't want to admit that I was an anxiety-ridden, stressed-out, I-don't-care-if-I-ever-snorkel-again-in-my-life-type person.

We pulled up anchor and set off for another location to snorkel.  I stayed on the boat that time and enjoyed the sun, salty air and ocean breezes.

Despite the downside to it all, I'm still glad I did it.  I'll just let National Geographic and the descendants of Jacques Cousteau get all of the underwater photographs next time and leave the swimming in the ocean to the fish, sharks and sea turtles.  I can now successfully cross out "Go snorkeling" off my bucket list.

I just wish I would have remembered that it was never on the bucket list to begin with.   

Redemption and Healing, Gladness and Joy

When I got the phone call from Anne asking me to go on this recent trip, a flood of memories came rushing back.  Memories that didn't hold a lot of joy for me.

As a college student I had been actively involved with one of the student ministries on campus.  I had joined the ministry as a freshman and then quickly joined the student leadership team my sophomore year.  I followed that up with a summer project in San Diego in 2005.  That summer I became good friends with a staff member from the organization, a woman who would go on to be my mentor that summer.  We kept in touch after San Diego and shortly after that, she asked if I would go with her and husband to Russia, where they would be leading a summer project.  I debated for awhile but felt a strong prompting to go with her and eventually said yes.  San Diego had been a pivotal time for me and I watched as Jesus had radically changed who I was, and my mentor had been part of that story.  Russia seemed like the next right thing to do.

I headed overseas the summer of 2006 and that summer would prove to hand me one of the biggest heartaches of my life.  Spiritually speaking, it was just an ugly summer, filled with a lot of disobedience and rebellion.  It wasn't always expressed externally, but I certainly harbored a strong critical spirit, one full of defiance.  I would drag my feet about everything, just not wanting to participate or choosing to find fault with staff or the ministry as a whole.  I was a mess on the inside - always feeling like a failure, always feeling like I didn't measure up, all while knowing I was being so utterly sinful.  It was like somebody had stuck a magnet on my compass and I could suddenly no longer tell which way was north, completely unable to discern things.  I didn't know which way was up and I was slowly drowning in my own unconfessed sins.

My mentor frequently called me out on this and because my own heart was a mess, all that did was add to my resentment.  I felt my bitterness growing each day.  I felt like all I ever got told was to "get a grip" and "snap out of it."  And when I couldn't snap out of it and I couldn't get a grip, the self-condemnation grew and my sadness and anger went deeper.  I was living out Psalm 32:3-4, "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer."  I was wasting away in my own foolishness.

It finally came to a boiling point about two weeks before we were supposed to came back to the States.  I remember sitting in a little coffee shop across the street from the university where we had been staying all summer.  My mentor sat across the table from me, where she proceeded to have a very frank conversation about my recent behavior and uncooperative attitude.  There was a big part of me that was very aware that everything she was saying was true.  I knew I was being a pain.  But there was also this part of me that had absolutely no idea how to get out of it or to change who I was.  I was stuck in my own muck and mire and "snapping out of it" just wasn't cutting it.  As Paul says in Romans 7:14, "I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."

The final blow was delivered when she asked if I wanted to go back to the States.  I thought she was joking and said, of course, I'd love to go back to the States.  I was homesick and I was sick of Russia.  But I also knew I couldn't leave.  I knew God had put me there for a reason.  So even if I wanted to leave, I knew I had to stay there.  But then she said, "But, Courtney, what if we made you go home?  We had a staff meeting last night and we considered putting you on a plane back to America."

Was I really in that bad of shape that I was being dismissed and discarded?  It's a conversation I have spent the last 8 years getting over.  It has buried fears so deep inside of me that I find I still react in light of that singular conversation, anticipating that people will write me off or anticipating I will somehow become that girl in Russia all over again.  Because that's what I felt like had happened - I had been an impediment to the team and those around me and the response was simply to remove me.  The very people I thought would have seen past my pain and my obnoxiousness were the very people who simply said, "We've had enough of you."

I really didn't want much to do with the ministry and the organization after that.  I still had to come back my senior year and co-lead the student ministry on my campus, something I look back on with profound regret and sadness because I feel like I failed as a leader and let down a lot of my peers.  My own heart was in shambles and hardly had a right perspective, but here I was expected to lead the very ministry that I felt like had crushed me.  I limped my way through my senior year, just desperate to be done with the role and to move on with life.

So, when Anne (who had also been with me that summer in Russia and was a saving grace as such a patient friend) called to ask if I would go them to New Caledonia this summer, you now know why my heart stuttered a bit at the request.  I wasn't sure I wanted to dredge up thoughts of Russia and I wasn't sure I wanted to partner again with the organization, or any of its branches of ministry.  I was terrified at even the remotest possibility of walking back into another situation like what I had experienced back in 2006.  Or becoming the person I was back then.

And so began the long march toward redemption and healing.  I began praying specifically Isaiah 35:10, "Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away."  Russia had been marked with anything but gladness and joy and I didn't want New Caledonia to be a repeat of that.  I wanted to be overtaken by gladness and joy.  Jonathan Parnell's entry from the Desiring God blog would also prove pivotal in the process - "Seven Details to See in Your Past."  I knew if I went, I needed to be free and clear of the past.  The nails needed to be put in the coffin of Russia, so to speak.

And in the last two weeks in New Caledonia, I watched that happen.  I watched sorrow and sighing be replaced with gladness and joy.  I saw wounds and hurts be replaced with redemption and healing. The process of healing is not always a particularly pleasant one.  But it is always sweetest on the other side of it - and it is always necessary, no matter how painful.

We had a free night one Saturday night about a week or so ago in New Caledonia.  I grabbed my backpack, journal and Bible, found a little shop that sold ham and cheese crepes, and then found a spot on the beach to camp out.

I sat down, sprawled out on one of the picnic tables by the beach as the sun set and wrote that night, "It's hard to realize that what you have been holding onto for so long let go of you a long time ago.  It's time to let the organization off the hook - and to acknowledge that it's a ministry made up of people just like me.  People who are sinful and messy and who don't always get it right."  I realized I had been holding on to Russia and that hurt for far too long, unintentionally and unconsciously.  And it was time to let it go.  To pick up the pieces and move on.

At the end of the trip, during our final debriefing time, we were asked to provide two words that described our trip.  Some people said "life-changing" and "inspirational" and a host of other adjectives.  My two words were simply "redemptive" and "healing."  So much had been redeemed and so much that had once been broken in me had been made whole.

My intent is not to throw this particular ministry or my mentor under the bus and I'm not here to point the finger. Please understand my heart behind this - it is not to offer a critique of the ministry or to paint them in a bad light.  I can only point to myself in this situation.  I'm very aware of my own stupidity and sinfulness and I take full responsibility for that.  But I'm very aware of Jesus and his unending grace that picks me up off the floor and sees to it that I somehow start to breathe again.

"There is not such a pleasant history for you to read in all the world as the history of your own lives, if you would sit down and record from the beginning hitherto what God has been to you, and done for you; what evidences and outbreakings of his mercy, faithfulness, and love there have been in all the conditions you have passed through." - John Flavel 

The outbreaking and evidences of God's mercy, faithfulness and love have been scattered all over my life these last two weeks.  I will be forever grateful for his redemption.  Because that means my past doesn't have to remain a place of sadness, but a place of great hope.  

Two More Countries Added to the Passport

Whew. So much to catch up on!  After being gone for over two weeks, my brain and my body are so out of sorts and my mind has been desperate to get words onto paper/blog.  Generally I prefer the distance between me and technology when I'm traveling, but then I hate having to do so much writing all at once when I get back.  I'd prefer the little chunks to the massive updates.  But, alas, when you're on the other side of the world with limited access, sometimes you have to settle for the marathon of catching up when you return.  I'm sure in the coming weeks I'll unload a hodge-podge of thoughts regarding my recent travels.  

I spent the last two weeks on a little-known island in the South Pacific called New Caledonia with Jesus Film Mission Trips.  I didn't even know this place existed until I was asked to go on this trip.  It's an overseas territory of France, known for its nickel mining, supplying a large percentage of the world's nickel.

Sometime late last summer or early fall, a good friend of mine, Anne, called me up to say that her and her husband were leading a trip to New Caledonia and asked if I would go with them.  The trip would primarily focus on one-on-one evangelism on campus at the University of New Caledonia, using the Jesus Film and other short films they produce as a means of engaging students and sharing the gospel.  The hopes is to continue to build a long-term ministry and eventually provide long-term staff who will lead and develop Christ-followers on campus.  It's a ministry that is in its infancy, so there was a lot of pioneering to do in order to pave the way for what will hopefully come in the near future.

And I figured since I would be on that side of the world anyway, flying in and out of Auckland, New Zealand, I might as well take advantage of that fact and spend some extra time hanging out in New Zealand.  So, I spent two extra days at the end of the trip exploring Auckland, visiting Hobbiton (trust me - there will be a post reserved for Hobbiton alone), and going horseback riding on the beach.

All in all, this particular trip holds a lot of memories and a lot of stories.  I think each of my overseas adventures has been marked by a specific theme and verse from the Bible.  This trip was about redemption and healing - and making Jesus known among the nations.  Isaiah 12:4-5 best articulates what I had been praying for on this trip:

"Give praise to the LORD, proclaim his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted.  Sing to the LORD, for he has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world." 

I wanted to proclaim Jesus and make him known among the nations - not only what he has done in my life, but what he is doing in New Caledonia also.  He has truly done glorious things and I wanted to make this known to all the world.  Or at least this corner of the world.