JMJ
AMDG
So quick life update:
I lived in a van for nine months, traveling America with eleven other people,
people I call brothers and sisters who started out as strangers but became some
of my closest friends. We led retreats for thousands high school and middle
school students, drove thousands of miles, and have thousands (only a slight
exaggeration) of inside jokes. I learned a lot of things, too. Life skills
things, like how to talk to literally anyone. Practical fun things, like how to
throw a ball (thanks, brothers). Deep-messy-hard things, like how to love
people even when they're fourteen and Do Not Want To Talk to you about anything, but especially Jesus. I learned so
many things and there are so many things I’m still learning.
It was great. It was
beautiful. It was so much more than I can really say. I’m doing it again next
year. Pray for me!
Anyhow, The Post:
***
When I was around
seven years old, I fell in love with Narnia. I wanted to be a Pevensie; I
wanted to find a magical world in my closet. My siblings like to remind me of
how I exerted my powers as Oldest Child and made them search with me in the
closets and cabinets and behind the bookcases, just in case. I never found
anything, which is probably because our home is empty of wardrobes.
It’s been awhile since
I was seven. I’m nineteen now, and I have no real idea what I’m doing with my
life once I stop being a full-time missionary, but still, really, I want to be
Lucy Pevensie when I grow up.
I want to find magic
in wardrobes and a Lion who isn’t safe, but good. I want to fight for truth and
goodness, whether that be in gentle ways or by rushing into battle. I want to
be Lucy Pevensie and be a queen and a warrior and sail to the edge of the world
and be Valiant.
Here’s a thing about
me: I really freaking love life. I have my messy angry EVERYTHING IS AN AWFUL
MESS moments. I know this. I’ve lived with myself for nineteen years. But as a whole?
I love life like a little kid does. Part of me is still that seven
year old girl. I still like dresses with skirts that twirl and I like flowers
and climbing trees and eating cookie dough and drawing dragons and medieval weaponry.(yes I had a thing for medieval weapons at seven.) I want to go on adventures and be a heroine and really, I
just want to be Lucy Pevensie when I grow up.
 |
| despite being nineteen, people mistake me for being twelve. i think it's partly just my face and also probably because photos like this are an accurate depiction of me. photo cred: Jacob |
I learned a lot about
being childlike this year. I learned that maybe, instead of having an actual
job (those are good though), what's most important is being the princess
warrior maiden I wanted to be when I was seven.
I learned a lot this
year about living like God is real. Not just—this is Jesus and I talk to Him
because I am a Good Person, not even this is Jesus and I talk
to Him because I love Him, but this is Jesus and no matter how
I'm feeling, He loves me and Quite Literally He’s All That’s Getting Me Through
The Day. Honestly, the only thing powering me through it some days—a lot of
days—most days—was sheer grace.
My brothers and
sisters and I saw miracles all year—like young people at the end of a retreat
admitting that a retreat was the actual last place they wanted to be that day,
but how it had been fun and good and they’d grown closer to their friends and
to God. Like how we hit a snowstorm and slid off the road and couldn’t travel
anymore that day, but we were amazingly only twenty minutes from a former
roommate’s family and they put us up for the night. Like how a boy on retreat
fell and cut his hand during a game we were playing, but was healed when my
brother prayed over him. Like how we didn’t have the some of the copies we
needed to pass out on retreat, but then they showed up in the stack of papers
with the others even though no one had given that paper to the woman making
copies for us. We made it through rainstorms and
snowstorms and a (small) hurricane and sleep deprivation and homesickness and
awkward conversations.
God is not an idea.
God is not someone who died for us and then left us to figure it out from
there. God is real, He is present, and He is at work, and I have seen it.
That’s all well and
good when you're a Jesus hobo who lives out of a backpack and a suitcase, when
you're traveling the country with your eleven best friends who feel the same as
you, when your "job" is literally to talk to people about God--but
NET doesn't last forever. Even here and now, as I prepare to head back to NET
to serve a second year, the fact remains that for right now, I am back for the
summer with all the normality of my hometown, and life is ordinary and calm. Of
course, there is summer job-finding and adjusting to normal life and all the
ordinary every day struggles—it’s not easy—
but it’s a definite change from the wildness of NET life.
Coming off NET can
feel a little like coming off a nine month long retreat high. Some days, NET
feels like a dream. Some days, I remember road life and it feels like I must
have imagined it. Towards the end of the year, one of my brothers exhorted
us: This year is real. What God did for us this year is real.
Still, I start to
wonder--yes, God is real--but is He real like I thought He was? It starts to feel like yes, that was real,
but now it’s time to settle down and be Practical and go back to solving everything
by myself.*
* This is how my brain works sometimes—but really, it’s so much more
practical to let the God of the Universe Who’s omniscient solve things.
Maybe you’ve felt this too. Maybe for you God is real in church but not
where you work, not when you’re hanging out with friends. Maybe you know God was real when you were on
NET, or at that retreat you went on, or in the youth ministry you were part of
in highschool, or the church you used to belong to, or in the time right after
your conversion, or whatever it may be. And you had those moments, those days,
months, years, when you knew God is radically Real.
And now you start to wonder if He is. Or you tuck those memories of
moments aside—a sort of that-was-then-but-this-is-now sort of thing, and now you’re
going to be grown-up and “practical.”
Hebrews 13:8, though: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and
forever. And whatever you learned about Him Then is still true Now. Whatever
ways He worked in your life, whatever miracles happened—those aren’t limited to
that past time. Something I’m working on, something I’d challenge you, Blog-Reader
Friend Person, to grow in, is to stop putting God in boxes. I mean, it’s mathematically
quite silly of us. You can’t limit people Who are infinite.
I want to stop putting
God in boxes and locking Him up in wardrobes, and start finding Him in the
ordinary. I think perhaps NET is my Narnia—and like Lucy to Narnia, I’ll be
returning there, but He is here, too.
“It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's
you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"
"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.
"Are -are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.
"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have
another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason
why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may
know me better there.”
― C.S. Lewis, The
Voyage of the Dawn Treader
 |
blurry me and a blurry brother and someone's blurry hand having
a dance party with small children in disney springs. because--yes.
photo cred: Jacob
|
I must learn to know
Him in other ways--Ordinary Life and NET Life are different, but God is present
and overwhelmingly Real in both. He is Real, He is Present---and He is not
Safe, but He is Good.
So, I’m here for now,
and who knows where later, but wherever I am, I choose to keep hanging on to
the joy and wonder that I had at seven years old. In the end, the difference between Lucy and Susan is that Lucy grew and Susan grew up. There is a difference between childlike faith and immaturity. I want to keep looking
for the magic in this world, which isn't hidden in closets but out in the great
wide open, if you're brave enough to find it and name it as such. I choose to
live like Lucy Pevensie, who danced with the trees and loved her family and
friends, and who believed in and saw Aslan even when no one else did.
Jesus, give me the
grace to see a Lion where everyone else sees trees, and the grace to say so
when everyone else still sees trees.
***
Note #1). YEAH SO I'M DOING NET AGAIN. Which is incredibly awesome. Also as a part of doing NET, I need to raise $6,000. This is about a quarter of the cost of our training, transportation, and a small monthly stipend. Please consider joining me in this mission by donating! Most people in the world don't serve on NET, but we're all called to be a part of the Church's mission of evangelization, and donating to a NET missionary is an awesome way to do that. Go to www.netusa.org/donate, click on "Support A Missionary," and fill in "Kate Cherry" in the I'd Like To Join The Mission Of box. Thank you!
Note #2) post related song recommendation.
