Try

 I didn’t fall in love, 

I rose in it. 

I saw you and I made up my mind. 

Toni Morrison 

Six weeks after the bus incident, I cried uncontrollably watching my last Southeast Asian sunset through an airport window. I landed in America, got a new apartment, unpacked my suitcases, and sobbed my way through reverse culture shock. 

For a year and a half, I wrestled with my desire to go back. There were meetings and coaching conversations, journal entries and counseling sessions, prayer and fasting, fear and longing.  

All the while, my heart ached in a way I’d never felt before. 

Maybe this was what Paul meant when he said he cared for the church like a mother cares for her child. Because somewhere so deep down—past my mind that knew the statistics, past my heart that loved the place—was a physical ache to pour my life out on Southeast Asian soil. Gone was the quest for adventure. Gone was the dream of seeing other parts of the world. Gone was the desire to keep my options open. Instead came waves of fervent prayer like I had never experienced before. Instead came fits of weeping over the unreached. Instead came dreams and visions and prophetic words over Southeast Asia. Instead came a plan to grow old there.  

I cried a lot that year, and I was never entirely sure why. No doubt part of it was the adjustment back to the United States, and part of it was a God-given burden for the unreached. Part of it was head trauma from being hit by two buses, but if I was honest with myself, my tears were mostly grief.   

When I felt the power of what was inside me—the longing to spend my life for the sake of one people group—I knew the other things I wanted wouldn’t survive. I knew I was looking in the face of the thing that would cost me my dreams of marriage and children. It would cost me access to corporate worship. It would cost me the joy of walking into a room full of friends who had known me for a long time. It would cost me birthdays and holidays and weddings and graduations. It would cost me all of that and more, yet the ache only grew more intense. 

I cried that year because I understood what my love for Southeast Asia would cost me. I cried because I was scared. I cried because I knew it could all go wrong. I cried because I was going to do it anyway. 

In the end, it came down to simple facts. God gave me a deep passion for the unreached. I worked for an organization I loved. My church and my supporters stood with me. I was willing. Jesus was worth it. And I was in turmoil. 

So with the turn of a new year, I made a new, shaky decision. I would go. I would say yes to moving overseas long-term. It’s the kind of thing you want to have peace about before you say it out loud. If I had waited for that, I would have never gone. 

A few nights later, under the 2:00 a.m. glow of my kindle, I noticed a word that changed everything. 

Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. 

Ephesians 5:8b-10  

Try. Try to discern. He didn’t ask me to do the impossible. He didn’t ask me to have perfect clarity or perfect peace or perfect intuition. He asked me to try.  

It didn’t shift all at once, but something happened to my quivering “yes”—all riddled with anxiety and hinging on the affirmation of others. I stopped needing one more person to weigh the evidence and tell me the answer. I stopped obsessing over whether every detail was perfect. I put away my bulleted lists with point values for the pros and cons. And somewhere in the trying, God wrote my nervous whisper into a song I would fight to sing. 

I told my supporters this: 

Here’s the honest truth—I have confidence from the Lord about my decision to move, but there are plenty of ways it could go wrong. There are certain answers I won’t know until later. But I’ve traded my desperation to do the right thing for rest in the One who loves me even when I do the wrong thing, because there is so, so much grace to try. 

So, for what it’s worth, I want to lay at the feet of King Jesus a bold and costly “try”—saturated in prayer, full of risk, and flawed with my own brokenness—and I want you to join me. Because even though it isn’t perfect, I believe it’s good and right and true, and I see the fruit of light shining through its cracks. 

Its light is still shining.