Can I admit something to you?
The Lord and I…we've been having words lately.
A recent exchange between us looked like me sitting in my car for a long time, watching the sun set below the horizon in the distance as I begged Him for answers to the questions I've been asking. And asking. And asking.
If you know much about me or my story, you know that I have been in a period of waiting for a long time. Years, really. Waiting for two very specific things, neither of which have happened yet.
If you've ever been in this situation before, then you probably resonate with these words from Proverbs 13:
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”
After more than half a decade of hope deferred, my heart is past sick.
My heart is curled in a fetal position on the bathroom floor, shivering with fever and praying for the relief of sleep. Not to be dramatic or anything.
And so as I sat in my car, tears mingling with my honey citrus mint tea from Starbucks, I (respectfully) demanded that He answer my newest question.
What do you want me to do now?
Here's the thing: I think I finally got my answer. I think He's actually been trying to give it to me for a while now, but it took intentional time of pausing and seeking and listening to hear it.
(You know, that whole being still thing the Bible always talks about.)
It took a few months, but that still, small, voice finally came through.
I got my answer.
And it scared me.
So then, of course, my answer to Him sounded something like this:
But God…
I'm not good enough for this.
I'm not prepared.
I don't have the resources.
I need more time.
I'm all alone.
In that moment I felt a little like Moses, stammering all the reasons why he should not be the one to go to Egypt to set God's people free. Obviously God is not asking me to confront a murderous king and rescue an entire people group by harnessing His power via a wooden staff, so the bar is a little lower.
Even so, the thing He's asking me to do feels risky.
As I sat there in the darkness (the sun had long disappeared by this point),
an impossible peace enveloped my soul as I heard these words in response to all my questions:
But Kati,
I will be with you.
I'd been working my way through the book of Joshua, and those were the words I found myself reading again and again. Every time God asks the Israelites to do scary things, to go into battle against enemies seemingly bigger and stronger and better equipped than they are, He comforts them with this promise:
I will be with you.
Do not be terrified.
Do not be discouraged.
Wherever you go, I am with you.
And so I'm trusting that a thousand years later, this promise holds true for me, too. I'm choosing to believe that if He is asking me to do this thing that feels impossible, He is going to make a way where there is none.
God is teaching this sickly heart of mine to hope. For streams in the desert, mountains in the sea, faith as big as a mustard seed: all those things that are easy to say but are much, much harder to live like they're true.
So with every slow and shaky step I take towards a future that I don't know,
I will cling to the one thing I do:
He is with me.
— Kati Lynn
