The corona craze is just a phase, or will it go on for days?

Or months or years? Please God, no fear! I hope my job still pays.

Can it be true? I’m feeling blue; who knows what’s right to do?

No stores, no jobs, no masks, no mobs; my plans are falling through!

Where is my hope? It’s up in smoke! Do we live in a kaleidoscope?

I’m in my head; I’ll stay in bed; I don’t trust what the president said.

 Who can I trust? In God, a must! Is all of my stuff covered in dust?

Social systems in the ashes; down the drain…where my cash is.

Stay home, they say, we’ll be okay.  Are we standing far enough away?

I guess I’ll cook, and clean and eat…..and eat, and make, and eat, and sleep.

Awake or asleep, where are my dreams?  Can you die from not seeing green?

I see it’s spring, now a new season; I’ll thank the Lord, it’s one more reason.

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This is a dramatic representation of how I felt the first week or so of COVID-19 shutting the world down.  Started with denial; followed by bouts of fear; waves of hopelessness and feeling lost; lots of questions and unknowns; wondering how to fill my time; and ultimately questioning whether or not I should persevere through it all, or give up on the resurrected dreams that seemed to be coming to fruition in my life before all this happened.

After all, God was the one who unlocked the door to the dusty desires of my heart of moving to Tuscany, Italy.  That was a dream of mine buried underneath years of failed attempts at finding a way to live abroad in a long-term, sustainable way.

I’d thought: Maybe one day when I’m “retired”.  

I’d thought: Maybe I will just live in the U.S. the rest of my life and do short-term trips, like most normal people do. 

I’d thought: Well, I already had my experience studying and teaching English abroad…and I’ve already been to lots of countries in my life….I should be thankful for what I have already done, and stop searching after more. 

I didn’t think.

I didn’t think that this was something that would happen in my life, because I had given up hopes that it could.

But God.

God resurrected those dreams from the dead.

At the end of January, out of what seemed like the blue, I was contacted by a staff member from the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Ships base in Kona, Hawaii, asking if I’d be interested in joining a team of missionaries there, planning on pioneering (aka starting up) a new base in Tuscany, Italy next year.

My heart stopped when I read the word Tuscany over the email.

I was reminded of how I used to be able to almost make myself cry thinking about how badly I wanted to live there. In Tuscany, specifically. Spending a semester abroad in Florence in 2013 made me fall in love with that country and culture. But I shoved the dream of possibly living there again some day away, because the more years that have passed, the more unrealistic and impossible it seemed to ever becoming real.

Of course, I had my questions and doubts about this opportunity; but in that moment, an undeniable hope was re-ignited within me, at a time of weariness of waiting on God to come through in my life (which I wrote about in my last blog post).  It was not just a hope of my deep-rooted desires potentially coming to life, but a radical hope in a God who cares about the buried dreams and desires within in me. The things that I had even given up on myself. A deep realization that He’s the one who planted those dreams within me, because there has been a purpose for them being there, all along. Even when I couldn’t see it.

Despite all of these thoughts and emotions coming up from the deep, I already had my mind (and application) set on going to Lesbos, Greece to join staff at a relatively new  YWAM base there.  So even though my heart was excited, my brain was reluctant about the thought of plans changing.  I had already told so many people that I was going to go to Greece; to be honest, a big part of me didn’t want those plans to change, because of that exact reason. I was still waiting to hear back about my application for Greece, anyway, so I still wasn’t ready to let it go.

But… with lots of thoughts and prayers and listening to my heart (which ain’t always easy in the noisy head of mine), I decided to take steps through the doorway that had opened for me leading into the direction of Tuscany.  Meaning, that I had to re-apply (ironically the very next day after I submitted it, the Greece base reached out to me), get references again (one of the downsides to YWAM being a decentralized organization), get an uncomfortable Tuberculosis screening (I am still a child when it comes to shots and needles and blood), and have a doctor sign off on my health forms (prior to which I needed to apply for health insurance, because I did not have it).

By the time I got all that paperwork in (by early March), I was so relieved and excited to finally be close to having a tangible plan in place for my future that gave me a sense of genuine hope.  My life up until this point has felt like a collection of puzzle pieces that are all beautiful and unique…yet don’t seem to fit together to form one cohesive picture. Leading me to a life-time of concocting my own vision of what the picture on the outside of the box could look like, yet never seeming to get it right.  Going to Tuscany to “pioneer” a missionary base/ school from the ground up was never the photo I expected or thought it would be…but it’s better than I ever could’ve imagined for myself.  Why didn’t I think of that?! A reminder that trusting in God’s leading, even when it may make no sense at the time, brings an abundance of life that I never could’ve achieved myself, even in my tireless striving pursuits.

Yet, as the world would have it, a global pandemic decided to break out subsequently after getting all my paperwork in. The entire nation of Italy was completely shut down…not to mention thousands of people dying there from this unruly virus.  Not long after, I received an email from Kona Ships, not about the status of my application, but about the base closing, due to the entire state of Hawaii being quarantined.  All of this, on top of the normal coronavirus craziness in our own day-to-day lives, plus my family being in NJ – right outside NYC where 50% of all COVID-19 cases in the US are – was a lot to process all at once.

Disclaimer: I am very thankful for my own health, and that of my friends and family, and I have everything that I need.  COVID has really shown me who and what is important in my life, and in no way am I trying to complain, only to explain and illustrate my narrative.

First came denial.  Then fear.  I was legitimately having night terrors. Then the sense of lostness came, like a big blanket blinding me from everything besides my own consciousness.

These are photos I took of my room at the eruption of the coronavirus.  I felt trapped in my space with no where to look but at the messy, broken things within me and at all the unfinished projects I’ve started. Looking back at my life like a collection of mis-matched fabrics that I don’t know what to make out of.  I thought I knew what they were becoming, until my future plans seemed in an instant to become only a reflection behind me.

Although I was tempted to lose out hope and give into fear, my faith in God was, and has been, keeping my head above waters, despite the external circumstances.

God is so much bigger than than the coronavirus. 

Although I had hope in God in a wide, general sense, I wasn’t sure what hope to hold out for my own personal life and my plans I was so excited about.  It seemed too insignificant in light of all the craziness going on.

Why would God care about the plans I have, when the whole world is going crazy right now? He’s too busy for me. There’s so many other people who need God more than me right now. 

I wasn’t sure if I should persevere with my hope in these plans becoming a reality in stubborn faith in God, or if I would be delusional and unrealistic in doing so.  I wrestled with this for a week or so, until I got to a simple point of realization that God knew that coronavirus was going to break out before I was led to this path.  Corona craze was no surprise to the guy in the sky.  And He wouldn’t lead me somewhere just to leave me hanging in the dark.  It’s not His character.

God’s plans prevail and He makes all things perfect in His time {Ecclesiastes 3:11}.

This verse has brought me great comfort that if these truly are God’s plans for me, then they will prevail. However, it also gave me no choice but to surrender my own timeline.  To let go of my own expectations of how it’s all supposed to “fit together” and play out in my life. I need to accept that I can make all the plans I want, but at the end of the day God’s the one directing my steps….and they might not be the ones I planned for {Proverbs 16:9}.

Getting to a point of surrender does not come without a fight. But once I got there, I briefly, but genuinely, told God that I will give up my own timeline and accept His timing   for the plans He has for me (not like I have an actual choice… but like I said, it’s fight). I kid you not…less than one minute after I prayed that quick prayer, I got a text from leaders of the team going to Tuscany apologizing for the delay in getting back to me about my application, and thanking me for my patience. Like…what?!

I couldn’t help but laugh at the comedy of it all.  How dramatic everything felt to me, and how long and hard it took for me to genuinely get to a point of letting go of my own control over my future. Then, when I finally let it go and expected to be waiting for another lifetime… in an instant God moved.  Yet again, reminding me that He is for me, not against me. That “surrendering” to His will, really just means replacing my fractured humanoid way of going about things, and choosing something better, even if that means waiting longer. That He cares about the little things, even amongst a landscape of darkness, pain, and chaos.

He sees me, He knows me, He hears me. He hasn’t forgotten me.

Although the wind and the chaos of the corona craze made it’s attempts to blow the fire out from within me, it is now burning brighter than it was before.  I can see a new season is emerging in my personal life, but also in the world as a whole. I have great hopes for restoration, reconciliation, and re-evaluation in our societies at large.  My hope and prayer is that whatever your personal story is related to COVID-19, that you do not lose hope in a God that cares for you, sees you, hears you and knows exactly what you’re going through.

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” {Isaiah 43:19}

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PS. I had a phone call with the team leaders that week they texted me, and got my official acceptance letter last week. So I will officially be moving to Pisa, Italy in 2021 (granted that it’s God’s plan/ timing obvi), prefaced by spending 6 months in Kona to build up a relationship with the team, serve at the base, and get prepared to embark on a new chapter in my life spending two years in Tuscany!

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