Time is flying by and I almost didn’t notice the date as it passed: August 29th. We’re out here at the lake where the days are full with quiet work, bubble blowing, slow conversations, and watching the deer wander through the yard. The memory of last year is almost just whisper as we exhale in the wide open spaces and breathe in the peace of a place.
August 29, 2014 found us moving out of our apartment and in with friends for what we hoped was a week, maybe two. A week that turned into a year of nomadic living as we went from one generous friend to another, sharing couches, rooms, snatching house sitting opportunities when we could, and staying with family in an effort to keep the wheels on the track while the train kept moving.
We could have left Los Angeles when that final box was packed and never looked back. Like Lot running for his life, we would have fled with what we had and figured we’d cut our losses and set up shop somewhere else. And then our friend, Rowena Rodriguez, she calls us out. She calls out our fear, our small faith and our withering hope.
Are we running towards a greater leap of faith or are we running from the hard?
And it feels like a punch to the gut as we stammer out excuses, but she holds fast and loves hard and reminds us that a life lived in ruthless trust never promises to be a life with all the answers and tidy ends and easy goings. The days of August are flying off the calendar and we run up hard against two questions:
- Do we believe that God is who He says He is?
- Are we willing to stake our life on it?
We’re not betting people but we put all our chips in with Jesus and make the call to step out of the boat, to jump into the deep and raging waters. And I’m packing boxes and I’m whispering, “You better show up because you’re all we’ve got left.”
It sounds like a dare but Jesus is kind and knows it’s fear of the unknown and loss of control that I’m really wrestling with, not Him. Because He’s good, and the Psalmist says He doesn’t withhold any good thing, right? All the time, in every circumstance, He has to be good or He’s not God. Right?? So if we’re packing up boxes instead of punching time cards and earning paychecks, then it must be good.
We had a name picked out for our first daughter but it didn’t seem quite right and so we saved it, My Man assuring me we’d have a second daughter the next time around. Because you can accurately predict those things. Turns out he’s right, and our second little girl born last week (August 24th, 2015) gets the name.
It’s not a month before her birth that I’m struck by the fact that this little one’s name is the sum up of our year, maybe the rest of our life. When we told people we were pregnant, they looked at us like we were crazy. You didn’t plan this right? You don’t know where you’re going to live next week, let alone in nine months when she arrives.
The most beautiful places God will take you in life may come from the wildest faith you’ve ever walked.
And so we name our daughter Kalyra, which means, “a wild and beautiful place.” It’s not that we needed to be more reasonable, more responsible, more logical.
We needed to be more trusting of our Abba, more open-handed with our life.
We needed miracles more than we needed our neatly ordered plans.
We needed a bigger faith more than we needed a bigger bank account.
And this baby, she’s sleeping on my chest, a vivid reminder that wild faith can lead us to beautiful places. And I’m praying this season of reckless running after the Cross never ends, that our life will always be colored by the beauty of life lived far beyond the boat.
Because I think this is just the beginning of all the wild and beautiful places this little tribe will go.