A Dare

                Nine months ago, Melissa and I boarded a plane and came to Asia. The time has rushed by. All of a sudden we are talking about finishing the semester and visiting home. We don’t talk about it, though, because we are weary of this place or so homesick for the States. Far from it. We talk about finishing in the sense of asking, “What more are we called to do before we visit home?” And when we speak of returning home, we ask, “What things are we called to do while we are in the U.S. before returning to Cambodia?” Honestly, a lot of the talk has been merely logistical. We aren’t sick and tired of Phnom Penh. We aren’t desperately homesick.

                And yet, there are times where we are tired of life in Asia. There are days where we catch a glance of home, whether through Skype chats or Facebook, and we feel homesick. We begin to miss the people we left nine months ago. But it’s not even just people we miss. We miss being a part of their lives. And it’s not just that, either. It’s more: we miss the things that are a part of their lives that currently are not a part of ours.

                I had a wrestling match with the Father when I was in college, before Melissa and I were really even friends. At that point I had begun to sense the call overseas, but in my heart I longed for something else. I imagined a small, regular community. I imagined getting married and having kids in this community. I imagined buying a house and working a job and settling down quietly. Don’t get me wrong—I also imagined serving and loving my community, with all my heart. And I used to ask my Father, “What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with wanting to just ‘settle down’?”

                He did give me an answer to that question. “Nothing,” he said. And I felt relief. For a moment. Then a restlessness returned, an uneasiness, sort of like that feeling you get when a gray, cloudy sky brightens a bit, and then the darkness seems to reappear out of nowhere. And suddenly the assurance I’d just felt disappeared. “Nothing? Really? Then why do I still feel this way?”

                Skip ahead a few years to today, a cloudy Sunday afternoon in Phnom Penh. We’ve been serving overseas for nine months, and, as many of you know, so much has happened in that short amount of time. Incredible, gut-wrenching things. And today, as Mel and I took some time for reflection and for intercession  I felt the answer come to my question from a few years back, when, unsure if there would ever be a real “answer,” I simply decided to trust Him, step out in faith, and choose to answer that restlessness in me.

                The truth is, we still wonder about that question, from time to time. It usually comes when we hear or see things going on back home, and we ask our Father, “Would it have been wrong for us to do that? Would it have been wrong for us to stay?” And then we hear a faint whisper in our hearts, asking, “Is it wrong to still have those desires?”

                While we were sitting inside our house today, I asked the question again: “What is wrong with settling down?” And again I heard this answer: “Nothing.”

                It rained a lot today, and suddenly the gray sky seemed like an immense blessing.

                What if there is a deeper purpose to the desire to “settle down”? What if my desire to remain in that place and my inner restlessness to answer the call to go are meant to be together?

                “Here’s the thing, Ryan,” I could hear him say. “Your desires are pure desires. They are desires given by me: both to go and to stay.”

                So why the choice? In the past I’ve heard myself say, “We are here out of obedience.”  And that’s true. We were called here. But we were also called to serve in different ways when we were back home, too. So what has been the difference? What made us decide to “go”?

                It was restlessness—an inward anxiousness that we didn’t ask for. And today, that anxiousness makes more sense, having taken the “leap” and gotten on a plane and traveled to a foreign country for the foreseeable future. It doesn’t make sense because being in the field is some great, romantic idea. This isn’t an adventure novel. It doesn’t make sense because of some grand turning point, some mystical experience that made it clear: “Yes! This is it! We’ve arrived!”

                It makes sense for a totally different reason. The same reason that people over the last 2,000 years have taken the greatest story in history to the nations. The same reason many of those people have given up everything to follow Him.

                And it’s the same reason He went to the cross. He made a decision in the Garden that altered the course of history, echoing back to its beginning and surging forward to its end. What did it for him? What made him stare into the depths of that cup and choose to drink it to the dregs? It wasn’t his thirst for adventure. It wasn’t to be some pinnacle to his spiritual experience.

                It was love. The kind of love that sees a broken person and desires for that person made whole. The kind of love that realizes it will cost everything to bring that wholeness.

                There are days where we long for the desires of home. In those moments, we cry out to our Father, and he reminds us that the tension within us is a gift: a gift to show us who we really are on earth. And it is a calling—a dare—to trust him when he beckons us to a place we do not understand, and to a people that does not understand us, nor his message.

                I wonder if someone reading this has felt the same restlessness, the same cloudy feeling that we have sometimes felt. If so, I hope that someone will come to realize that the restlessness is a gift, and that while staying where you are might truly come from a pure desire, the truth is—we know—there is something else out there in the rain, something beyond mere adventure. There is a dare, and it is a dare to love the far reaches of the world, in a way that touches souls—both ours and theirs—with hope.

-Ryan