Falling

“It was awesome.” That’s about all I’ve told most people about our trip to Uganda. How do you sum up over a week of amazing experiences? Honestly, I’m still processing it all myself.

I’d like to blog about each day, but I don’t know how long it will take, so just bear with me.

Before I get to the trip, though, I need to start with the day before we left -- Sunday, October 3, 2010. I went to church with my sister, and cried during worship. Since coming back from Uganda last year, the song “You Hold Me Now” (If you haven’t heard it, you should listen to it by clicking here) has brought to mind all of my friends in Uganda. I pray that song for them, that God would hold them through everything that they have to go through. Anyway, I had tears streaming down my face by a few lines into that song as I sang and prayed. At the end of the service, I bawled like a baby during this. I was barely holding it together until there was a beautiful Ugandan lady crying on the screen. I immediately grabbed my sister, who was sitting next to me, and she held my hand as I cried, and prayed for all of the people that I would be seeing, that somehow God would use me to reveal Himself and His love to them.

So I was feeling fired up about this trip, and then I got to go to MSO (“Middle School Only”). Our lesson was on trust, and we were going to do a trust fall. One of the girls gets up to do her fall, and then slightly panicked. You could tell that she wanted to do it so badly, but her fears were keeping her from it. Wesley said “If you do it, Helen will do it!” and I said “Sure!” so when at last she fell into the arms of her fellow middle schoolers, I made my way to the big box on the stage.

When I stood up on the box, I was kind of surprised that my knees went weak and my hands started shaking. Was I really afraid? I honestly wasn’t afraid that they were going to drop me… I’m not that heavy. I really wasn’t afraid of getting hurt, and while I am not fearless when it comes to heights, the box wasn’t that far off of the ground… maybe 3 ½ feet? “Good grief…WHY am I shaking?” was all that kept going through my head. I must have looked as shaky as I felt, because Smooth asked if I was ok. I think I managed to spit out something like “Yeah… I’m just… um…phew…um… let’s do this!” and then I said “Falling,” waited for my middle school friends say “Fall on,” and I fell backwards into their arms.

I knew that they were going to catch me. I hadn’t doubted that. I trusted them. But that didn’t stop my knees and hands from shaking.

I kept thinking about it all day, and then I felt like God told me that what had happened on my trust fall was what He had been trying to tell me in the weeks leading up to the trip to Uganda – a little shaking doesn’t mean you don’t trust. The important thing is whether you fall anyway.

I don’t know if you read the last post before I left, but I wrote about how I had been feeling inadequate and was battling doubts and fears about the trip. I was feeling anxious and nervous about the trip, even though I was not truly afraid of anything that could happen. And when I started feeling anxious, I started beating myself up inside, thinking that I must not trust God enough because I was fighting fears. I thought – “Surely if I really trusted God, I wouldn’t have any fears before heading off to Uganda. Right?” I would try to figure out why I was nervous, and would always come up empty – nothing specific was making me afraid, so (like the trust fall) I would come back to “Good grief…WHY am I shaking?”

But through the trust fall, I felt like God was trying to tell me that the natural reaction of shaking, of being nervous, of having your knees go weak, is ok. It’s natural. He will listen to me cry out when I get scared, and He holds me through the fears. But as far as trusting Him or not trusting Him, the bottom line isn’t whether or not my knees shake when I get on the box and take a deep breath. I think that the bottom line is whether I choose to fall anyway. The bottom line is whether or not I can stand and say “My knees may shake, but I will fall. I choose to trust and fall.”

So on the trip, there were times when I would start shaking – when I was asked to preach, when I was sharing the Gospel in a pool hall, when I was praying with a woman whose children had been killed by demons. There were times when my knees started to go weak, but I told God that I was choosing to fall.

This is from a prayer that I wrote to God somewhere between Detroit and Amsterdam: “Thank you for the trust fall that we did in MSO on Sunday. Thank you for letting me do it and teaching me an important lesson ¬– getting shaky doesn’t mean I don’t trust… as long as I will lean back and “Fall on” when you tell me to…isn’t that all you ask for? I may get shaky on this trip, but I commit to falling, to leaping, to trusting, to loving, to serving, to saying, to singing, to DOING whatever you want me to do.”

So, friends, I’ll have the stories of loving, singing, trusting, and serving, but I just wanted to start with a story about falling.