Hope for the Change Averse

I'm on the bank of the Thames watching Tower Bridge watch the tourists. Change sits beside me in the absence of Helen, my partner in crime (i.e., cooking and cleaning).  I'm on our Thursday night walk alone. In about half an hour I'll return to my apartment building where my friends are not.

I know change can be good, but this change messes with me in a way I've never felt.  A year passed faster than it should be allowed to, and I'm left reeling from one teary goodbye after another.  I still wake up to the neighboring construction site's drills, hammers, shouts, but there's no one left to hear my noisy rants about the noise.  

How strange that your entire life can change overnight.

One day you're part of a close circle of friends doing a gap year together, and the next day they're homebound on their coaches and trains and planes, and you're an intruder in your own home. (That might be a bit dramatic, and the new teams here now are great, but that's how I felt.)

Why do I fight change so much? Why is it so easy to make routine and security and comfort and familiar faces my god? Something shifts, someone leaves, and my entire world disintegrates. I'm left wondering if maybe they made up too much of my world?

Characters in the Bible experienced change, which tells me we're to expect it in our own lives. Abraham was told to move countries. Job saw everything he loved snatched away. The disciples watched their hope die on a cross.  Life IS change, especially in this fallen place.

I know it's ok to mourn this loss. But I'd be fooling myself to think life stays the same. I'd be fooling myself to want that. 

New seasons bring new pain. But I can see that through every loss and heart-breaking transition, God brings good things, too. And it's encouraging to remember that the same God who brought those people through their most difficult times of change is the same God who brings me through it now. I may hate the noise from the construction site, but those workers aren't just over there getting paid to make noise. They're building something. (More flats, I think.)

It's the same with us. We're not built into Christ's likeness without change, without the noise.  But these words bring me comfort in the throes of change, whether the change dashes me to the floor or simply makes me sit less comfortably:  "In the hands of a changeless God, I need fear no change."

"[He who fears the LORD] is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD."

Psalm 112:7

London Calling, Part 2

“How was London?” Loved ones back home will ask.

How can I even begin to answer that?

These past eleven months hold much.

London is still crowded. Diverse. It was sunny most days, homesick some days. London was a lesson: how to tourist-dodge and power-walk, how to avoid Oxford Street on Saturdays, a lesson on how many people you can fit in a Tube carriage. 

London was a rush.

A rush of games/crafts/songs, kids with sticky hands, tired mums, restless teens.

It was cold.

It was jigsaws at midnight, bleary-eyed breakfasts, dinner feasts kitted out with candles and cake.  It was a rush of tea and probably too many biscuits.

London was a mad dash of a year gone too fast, and a quiet walk through God’s steady grace.

It was a group of strangers become friends...become family.

“How was London?” They’ll ask.

 Who could give that answer justice?

But as Seonaid would say, “It was a good laugh.”

Pray Big

The day before my fiance and I flew from the UK to the States for a friend's wedding, he left his passport on a train.

I got the text while shopping for a present for the bride. I stood there incredulous and teary, staring at nightgowns, as Jonny told me that the train carrying his backpack could be anywhere from central London to miles outside the city. The bag could still be tucked behind a seat, or it could be sat at any lost-and-found of any of the stations along the route. And we were leaving early the next morning for Tennessee.

The backpack also had his wallet, keys, security card granting access to his work building. Since there wasn't enough money on his travel card to get him home from work, I had to go to his office and give him cash. He walked me to an ATM; I punched in my PIN and tried to stop crying. I held out the £10, couldn't look at him. Anger was there, faintly. He's known for leaving things behind. But it was more disappointment than anything, the deepest disappointment I've known in a while.

I had to get to work, still sniffling on the bus ride back. I envy people who can hide their emotions. And I couldn't shake it, couldn't forget about it. I also envy people who can compartmentalize their emotions, put them aside. This colored everything I tried to do that day. I kept saying, "I cannot believe this is happening," over and over in my head.

Jonny called every train station on the route. He went to Waterloo, where the train terminated before going out again, and checked the ticket offices, Lost Property, and holding huts on all the platforms. Nothing. He was told that even if it was found that day, it would take about 24 hours to process through their recovery system. And we knew their security policy: any passports found must be destroyed.

The title of this article is "Pray Big", and I've said nothing about prayer yet. What's the difference between small prayers and big prayers, anyway? Maybe big prayers are those that seem most impossible to be answered. Or maybe they're the ones with the highest stakes.

My prayers that day consisted of, "Please, God. Please." That's all I found the heart to utter because I knew this was a Big Prayer. The odds of Jonny getting his passport back were close to zero. If the bag was found, it'd take too long to process. If they processed it, they'd destroy his passport as part of their security policy.

Sadly, my Big Prayer of "Please, God" became a statement of resignation: "Jonny is not coming with me on our 10-day holiday to see my family and celebrate my friend's wedding. I'm going alone."

I know at that moment Jesus would've said to me, like he did many times to his disciples, "Where is your faith?"

Jonny resolved to take me to the airport even if we didn't find his passport. He left work and had one last chance to check Waterloo for his bag. Still at work, I walked around holding onto my phone.

It rang and I hit the answer button, dreading to hear the words that would put the last nail in the coffin of our vacation.

"Shan? I have it."

I almost dropped the phone. I started crying even harder then, pure relief plus the aftermath of being so upset all day.

"It had just been handed in when I got there," he said, "and my passport was about 20 minutes away from being destroyed." He'd managed to convince the worker not to process it through their system and just hand it over.

I suddenly felt very small. Incredibly humbled. Maybe a bit ashamed. It had looked impossible to me, so I'd decided it must be. Could I be any more arrogant? Who was I to decide what was or was not possible? Hadn't I learned yet that, with God, probability has nothing to do with possibility?

We left the next morning and had an amazing time. Although during the trip, Jonny gave me permission to ask him every hour or so, "Where's your passport? Do you have all your bags?"

I heard an anecdote on a podcast recently that fits with this experience. It may or may not be true, but the lesson resonates with me.

Alexander the Great had a trusted general in his army whose daughter was getting married. Alexander said to the general, "I'd like to help out with the cost of the wedding; ask me for an amount."

So the general wrote an amount on a piece of paper and gave it to the treasurer. The treasurer stormed off to the emperor and waved the paper at him. "Look at this! Look how much he's asked you for! Who does he think he is?"

"Give it to him," Alexander replied. He took it as a compliment. "With such an outlandish request, he shows that he thinks me both rich and generous."

That story made me ask some questions. What do my prayers say about my view of God? Do I think he's able to answer big prayers? I realized that it's glorifying to Him to pray big, to "ask for the nations", because it's saying something about how I see Him.

In the grand scheme of life, my prayer about Jonny's lost passport was a relatively small prayer. It's tempting to think that God sees it that way, too, to think, "God's busy with more important things, like war and cancer and missing children." I think that's why this answered prayer humbled me and literally drew me into worship. It wasn't that my love for God was dependent on the prayer being answered. He owes me nothing. I found myself in awe of Him, to know that Someone so great heard and answered a cry from someone so small.

I've never felt so loved.

As life carries on, I have this to hold on to: God answered my prayer. When it seems like He's distant and I feel unheard, I can remember that God answered my prayer. When a situation seems impossible, I can glorify Him by asking for the impossible.

I have learned, and am still learning, to pray big.