brave steps

The day I arrived in Texas, it was 112 degrees. Surprisingly, I found I was not sweating miserably as I began unloading my small collection of belongings from the back of my dad’s F150 truck. This was the first difference I noticed between my home in Tennessee, and it seemed like an okay deal. It was going to be twenty degrees hotter, but at least my hair wouldn’t have to constantly fight the Tennessee humidity! I felt pretty confident in that moment, that I would adjust well and quickly fall in love with this new home. Two months passed, and I realized that while the Texas heat was a simple adjustment, moving to a place where no one knows your name is anything but simple and transition comes in waves of excitement and sorrow all at the same time.

My first trip home was in October, three months into this new season of life. I sat with my sister in the parking lot of our hometown Sonic, crying my eyes out and telling her I did not want to go back. In Tennessee, I saw familiar faces almost anywhere I went. If I got lonely, I only had about a ten-minute drive from any of my cousins or grandparents that I wanted to see. The city I now called home felt anything but welcoming to me. I got lost at least twice a day on the metroplex highways and felt like a stranger in every room that I entered. When homesickness hit, the people around me never even noticed I was upset. I constantly questioned why I was here and why this journey was so hard. Despite these questions, I could clearly see that God had provided for all my needs. I had an affordable and safe house to live in, almost all of my master’s degree was paid for, and I had a source of income that was taking care of all of my extra expenses. This caused me to be riddled with guilt as I found that I had no joy in the place God had planted me. Two years in to living in Fort Worth I still battle some of these same emotions and thoughts. I have come to realize that sometimes God’s greatest blessings are unexpectedly hard and that there is strength in admitting that.

My initial tendency was to avoid the hard emotions at all costs! The first few times that I began feeling homesick, I tried to hide it from everyone. My mom and I would talk on the phone every day and that was perhaps the most upsetting for me. My mom could always tell when I was upset, but 13 hours of distance proved to separate us in a way I was not prepared for. She would ask how everything was going, and I would tell her all about the new people I was meeting and the ministries within the church that I hoped to be involved in, but I never acknowledged the suffocating longing I had, to be back home with her and my family and friends. I thought, “I’m not supposed to feel this way! I just need to focus on all the good things happening around me.”

I don’t know where I first developed this avoidance mechanism, but I fear it is something we all silently struggle with. Maybe you are reading this and like me, you’ve thought that being a strong Christian means always having a smile and joyful attitude. Maybe you are just starting to learn about faith, and you question if God even sees or cares about you. Psalms 34:18 states that “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in Spirit.”

God is not distant, and he is not cold to us. He does not leave us alone to sort out our hearts but desires to help us navigate every part of our lives! We have to get over the lie that feeling emotions like sadness or anger means that we have done something wrong or that God is not present with us in those moments. He sits with us in the sorrow, the hurt, the frustrations, and he leads us back to strength and joy and peace. The enemy’s tactic is to keep us isolated in our emotions, because he knows that the greatest tool God uses to bring us comfort and refresh our joy is found in community. The lies we are believing about our situations and the overwhelming feelings of dread, anger, or sadness begin to level when we let someone else into our struggles.

I experienced this personally for the first time in that Sonic parking lot. I confessed to my sister that God’s call was too hard and that I couldn’t go back. My sister gently began helping me to see the truth I was forgetting. She didn’t tell me to get it together or that I was wrong to be thinking this way. She sat with me and agreed that yes, this is hard. That part was true! The lie that I had begun to believe was that it was too hard. She then pointed me back to the blessings that God had placed before me. In my residency program, there were two other candidates that were from the same area of Tennessee that I was from. They were also feeling the weight of homesickness and missing the mountains and familiar spaces that I longed for. He also brought three amazing ladies that each in their own way helped me to see the joys hidden in Texas, process emotions I didn’t understand, and give much needed hugs when words weren’t enough. Through these relationships, I realized that God knew this would be hard long before I ever acknowledged it and had sent these godly friends as pillars for me to lean on.

So, my first tip for anyone facing a transition or huge change in life is to allow yourself to discover the power of community. To do this, we have to open up! Those friends couldn’t read my mind. They hadn’t seen me grow up, so they were unaware of the signs that I show when I am upset. This meant that I had to be brave and start sharing my heart. So, when a friend would ask how I was doing, I stopped sharing how I wanted to be doing and let them know that I was struggling. They didn’t always have solutions or answers, but I was always met with a hug and instantly the burden didn’t seem to suffocate me as much.

In one of my first journal entries, I started recording when I moved, I wrote the phrase “the more steps I take, the braver I get…”

That is what has inspired the theme of this post because our emotions can seem scary and overwhelming when we strive to navigate them alone. This is because we are designed to process and grow together. If the enemy has led you to an avoidance mentality or the belief that you have to manage on your own, I encourage you to step out and discover your pillars. God sees exactly where we are and desires to help us carry our burdens through the power of His love and His people. So, let’s be brave together and take a step towards the community God has placed around us in this season. Because I can now say with confidence that the more steps we take, the braver we will get.