Ready to Jump

Dearest Persons,

(I write addressing you as persons because I don't better know what to call you... you may be my Mother, you may be a roommate, you may be a dear friend, you may be an acquaintance, you may be one of my much needed and appreciated prayer warriors, or you may not even know me... but no matter who you are, you are definitely a person and so I will address these posts to you, persons, and I thank you for reading and invite you to comment in whatever type of response the reading of these posts gives you.)

Today marks the ten-day point. I fly out of Columbus, Ohio Tuesday the 9th for Egypt!! I am so excited, so ready... and yet so scared and so unprepared and anxious all at the same time. I don't know if you've ever wrestled with something like this before... I'm getting ready for the adventure of a lifetime and I am so anticipating it, yet at the same time there is so much pulling at my pant-legs and holding me back. I ended the semester, it seemed, in a whirlwind. So many papers to sign, so many people to leave, so many things to pack away, and so many emotions spinning me around and around. I'm pretty sure all of the rush and worry and just... emotion, was what made me sick for the first few days that I was home. But the rest and the time at home with my family has been so beautiful and refreshing and just reflective.

As I look back over this past semester I really feel like I am in the place that not only am I ready for a change of pace and learning styles, but I desperately need it. The day after I got home I found a box from the Middle East Studies Program full of my textbooks. I began reading one entitled, "Arabic-Israeli Conflict" along with another book I have been encouraged to read, and I am drinking it in. I have never sat down and read a text book. I'm on chapter 9 of 12 and I have read every single word! In reflection, this past semester has been a lot of class work that hasn't interested me and has been really difficult, and while Arabic will not be easy, I am so ready to learn something that I deeply desire to learn and am so excited that once again I want to learn, I want to read, I want to study.

The other part of this wild adventure that I am so ready for is the part that involves my Jesus. There is so much more than where I am at right now. Have you ever been at a lake? In the summer and the water looks so amazing and so you get in a canoe and you paddle your way out into the middle of the lake and you gaze down into the water. The sun is pelting your back and you start to sweat and you super wish that someone else is around so that you could jump in and not have to worry about the boat. You look down into the water and realize as you get hotter and hotter that the boat doesn't matter. You long for the wet coolness to surround you and to splash up over you... and as you sit there in the hot sun in the middle of the lake, you begin to neeeed it! But then the boat holds you back. You start thinking about the boat... what if you get in the water and you can't get back into the canoe by yourself? Worse yet, what if when you jump out the canoe flips over and you lose the paddles or when you try and overturn it, it fills with water and sinks? Or what if you jump into the water and can't get back in the canoe and are too tired to hang on, too tired to swim, too tired to make it back to shore? But then you look back into that beautiful clear water staring back at you, inviting you to let go of your fears and leap into its wonder and you make a choice. My choice? I'm jumping in! This semester, this year, for a long time I've been sitting in the boat sweating my life away holding on to the boat, communing with the water... talking to it, yet not ready to let go of the boat... the stuff in my life, the people, the commitments, the time, all good things... but not as good as standing up and diving head first into the depths. What if I could do that? What if right now in this moment, in this semester, I could learn the art of diving into the depths of my relationship with Jesus? What if I could stop playing the "what if" game with the boat and just DO IT! What if I could "go big"? Sure, I'm scared. Sure, the boat is full of good things and isn't bad, and sure I possibly could jump out and get weak and almost drown... but how will I ever know the fulfillment of the water, the coolness of its touch, the wonder of its waves unless I just get out of the boat? My aim in this trip to Egypt is to not just slide over the side of the canoe, but to jump out head first and to dive into my relationship with Jesus. Will you join me? Yeah... you can jump out of the boat too. You don't have to go to Egypt. I don't either. This is just the place that I am where I am realizing just how much of Jesus I haven't been diving into. And if you're already in the water... will you pray for me? Will you encourage me? I know that this semester is going to be really hard. I'm already feeling the effects, and I am sure that while diving into the water is the place that I need to be, it holds change and change hurts. Who knows the places that I need to be broken and molded, except that they are there, and it will hurt. But... what if I do? Really. What if I jump. How amazing that will be on the other side and how much closer I will be with my Jesus and how much richer my life for taking the plunge.

So here I am...
Ready to jump!

With love,
Your Kara Joy