We strive, we toil in this life...to attain, to get more, have more...really just to be more. We work to get a better education, so that we can get the best paying jobs. We work hard at careers day in and day out, waiting and hoping for promotions and recognition for our hard work. Often this toiling comes at great, great sacrifice of the really important things...our families, our children, our joy, indeed our very lives.
Somewhere we look up and see that we are missing the very lives we had hoped to achieve. Maybe the outer trappings are there....the big house, the nice cars, a hefty retirement, all the lights, bells and whistles on the latest and greatest "toys" the world can offer us. But at what price? Jim Rohn tells us that there is always a price for every goal that we set. We simply have to ask is it worth paying? Sometimes, I think we look up and realize we've paid a terrible price, and the goal was not worth it.
And so as 2008 was drawing to a close...I embarked on a 40 day intensive prayer journey. The joy had gone out of our family. Our eyes were empty and had lost their sparkle. Our laughter had slowly disappeared. We had lost our daddy to the daily cycle of working to live and living to work. He was depressed, angry and hurting. A numbness to life had replaced his vitality and an apathy had lodged in our home.
My prayers focused on him...and initially were for his health, his walk with the Lord, his job, his boss, etcetera, etcetera. Then about 2 weeks into my journey, I began to see the tiniest flickers of something in him...to say it was a spark would be to overstate the situation...really it was a "consciousness". Like when someone has been unconscious, and they "come to". That was all. But it was enough that it sparked my desire to remember the scripture..."the effectual, fervent (italics mine) prayers of a righteous man availeth much." What if my fervency created more effectiveness? I began to dig deeper, and press in.
The days turned into weeks, and some changes were evident....but not truly powerful ones. I was okay with that. My husband was beginning to emerge...and maybe that was all God wanted to do. So I continued on, realizing that maybe earth shattering change may not be what God desired....just seeds sown. So I rested in that and continued to pray.
Then came the 39th day....which I laughingly call the "eleventh hour". It started out like any other day, and so when my early bird Emily awoke, I took her and we went grocery shopping while daddy and the other kids slept. He did not have to leave for work until a little later and so we kind of made a day of it. When we arrived home, our dear daddy was still in bed talking on the phone. Not completely unusual for his strange work schedule....I didn't really give it a second thought. He came out a moment later, having finished the conversation on the phone....and wrapped me in his arms and began to kiss my forehead. Now this was a little unusual, and my curiosity began to wonder what was up.
What unfolded before me was miraculous and surreal. He simply said, "I'm done Kim. I am done living like this, I am done feeling like this, I am done exchanging my joy and my life, even my family for some dream that isn't really even mine! I don't want any of it! I only want laughter, and joy and peace with you and my children. That's all." Then he said with every bit of peace and joy...absolute calmness in his voice, "I want to move to Hawaii."
I had experienced a piece of what he was desiring earlier in the year when my dear friend flew me to the Big Island of Hawaii to visit her in the Spring. What had started out as a simple vacation took on a spiritual significance that had left me changed forever. Experiencing God on a level that took him out of all of my "churchy" boxes, and let him fully be the magnificent creator of a majestic universe, and to realize he was simultaneously the lover of my soul! To laugh out loud, to play hard, to stand in a waterfall and let the water drench my thirsty soul! John had watched it all from the outside...but only now, nine months later... had he said "enough".
And so we are walking away, and leaving it all behind. The striving, the toiling, ....the emptiness and the lifelessness. Jesus said, "I have come that you might have life and have it to the fullest!" We've only caught a glimpse of what "fullest" means, but it was enough of a glimpse to know that we are starving for it, and our current path certainly does not lead to it.
So far in these few days since we have decided to move...I have been overcome a few times with anxiety of the what it truly means to "leave it all behind". There have been very sad and difficult closures on relationships that I had held dear. And while the pain at times has been almost unbearable, I realize that those heart strings were cut for such a time as this. So I exhale, and let go.
Even this morning I woke up with heart palpitations and unable to catch my breath...at the prospect of selling ALL of our stuff! Sixteen years of marriage, my whole existence has been to create a beautiful home. And we will literally leave with hardly anything. How deep this American dream runs! Even when you think none of it matters and you think you could "walk away" from it all....until you actually have someone showing up to pick up all of your things...you will never know. I never knew.
But all of life is a process. And today, I look back and see the work of Simplicity that the Lord has led me down for the past ten years. A constant and consistent revealing to my heart of what was important and laying down of that which was not. Downscaling, downsizing my life...again and again. And learning to enjoy the little, near meaningless things in life...and to come face to face with the realization that they are really the ONLY MEANINGFUL things that there are.
And so as an eagle waits and waits perched patiently at the edge of his nest...my Father has brought me there, again and again, reminding me that I am not of this world and it's ways, and I was never intended to make my home in this nest. For he created me for the high places, and to get there I must wait for the wind of his Spirit and then step out into the unknown .....and soar. For eagles do not flap and strive to fly....they simply wait....and wait...and when the wind comes, they spread their wings and mount up into the highest of places carried only by the wind.
