I write this blog as I reflect on what I hope to preach at church on Sunday, but am feeling completely uninspired. Don't get me wrong, I love God, and no matter what, He is my source of hope and joy in the world, but the bonfire of passion for Him that I had 5 years ago has dulled into a radiant heat from an electric heater. It still warms me up, but its safer, and has a place neatly in the background of my life, and not the central focal point, burning wild and free.
But I wonder if that's entirely a bad thing. I think our faith goes through phases naturally, just like a relationship. It goes through times of passion and honeymoon, then through times of struggle and conflict, and most of the time - in a healthy relationship - it finds its rest in times of quiet, comfortable stability. With each phase comes benefits and pitfalls.
In the passionate honeymoon phase, our love is loud, and our devotion is clear and all-consuming. This is wonderful and exciting, but the danger is getting carried away. Sometimes passion left unchecked can cause destruction. If you pursue your passion without regard to others, people in your path can be hurt by your disregard in your consumption of passion.
In the struggle and conflict phase, the downsides are clear - this is where many relationships and faiths crumble. When faced with life's challenges and questions that seem too hard, or near impossible to answer, it is easy to give up the fight and go another direction. However, there is a benefit to this phase. These moments of doubt and conflict make our love and our faithfulness stronger if we can come out the other side. Like lifting weights or recovering from a medical procedure, it's painful in the moment, but we come out the other side healthier and stronger if we persevere.
In the comfortable stability phase, we feel at peace. We've felt the highs of passion and the lows of struggle and we now sit in the middle ground, knowing that what has been forged through these times has come out stronger. However, the danger is getting too comfortable, and taking our relationship for granted. We may feel tempted to sacrifice daily communication and expressing our love and faith in outward ways, because we feel like we don't need to because of the security we feel. Many relationships end in this phase, because partners feel as if they're being taken for granted. This can be true of our faith as well. Although God will never leave or forsake us, if we do not intentionally fuel the fire of faith, we will feel like God is fading into the background, and we will quickly become resentful, wondering why God is not moving in our lives. However, when our faith reaches this point, we feel resentful towards God, as if He ahs taken us for granted, when in reality, we are taking Him for granted, and are not taking time to invest in our relationship with Him to keep it strong on our end.
I would say I feel like I am in this stability phase, but I am becoming aware of the fact that I have taken my faith in God for granted. He has faded into the background while I was distracted by other things, and I need to make sure I am still communicating with Him, and keeping Him at the center. This is how my life will remain full and fulfilling in faith, even though the fires of passion have dimmed. I don't need to set my house on fire to feel like I have a genuine faith, I just need to be intentional about communicating with God and keeping my focus on Him in ALL phases of this faith relationship.
I write this as the preface to this blog I wrote on December 6th, 2019 because I feel like this is the shift of phase I was feeling as I transitioned home. I was shifting from the honeymoon phase to the stability phase, but with that came the feelings of conflict as I reconciled what that transition would look like. I don't want to forget where I came from, but I am now at peace with the fact that I don't have to be radically on mission at all times to have a valid and genuine faith. Even the church had its time of radical growth and passion in Acts, but there was a time when they transitioned to stability - establishing a global church, faith traditions, buildings and communities. This cannot be viewed as a bad thing, but just as a natural transition in God's relationship with His bridegroom - the church. Over history this relationship has gone through similar cycles of passion, conflict, and stability, and all of them are equally important for creating a stronger and more faithful church. Reading this blog from 5 years ago gives me a window into the importance of all of these phases as I myself was in the intersection of all three at one time. I hope that this can be helpful to you, as well, and encourage you no matter what phase you are in, that God is committed to you no matter what, and you can reap the benefits and overcome the challenges of the phase you are in and come out stronger and more faithful.
Am I Broken?
Originally posted on 12/6/2019 on https://archive.theworldrace.org/jensummy/am-i-broken/
It’s been great being home, but I’m not gonna lie, it’s been hard.
Coming home and seeing my house, my hometown, my church, my friends, I feel like a million years has passed this year, but it feels like a dream, because even though I feel like I’ve changed so much, I feel like I just pressed play on my old life and nothing has really changed.
Almost instantly I felt the nagging of old habits and temptations that I gained freedom from. This year has been the most freedom I’ve ever felt in my life, but now that I’m home it feels like a lot of that freedom just evaporated. The self-deprecating humor, the sleepless nights full of anxiety, the overwhelming stress of an ever-growing to-do list, and no sign of the peace that used to keep me steady when trials would come on the Race.
So what is different about the me at home and the me on the Race?
Well… That’s what I’m trying to figure out.
The day before we went to the airport in Madrid I had a prophetic dream that our plane crash landed literally feet before the runway of the airport, and we landed in someone’s back yard. No one on the plane was hurt, but the plane was down for the count. The guy who owned the house came out and was angry that we crashed in his yard, but his wife had a different attitude. She came out with lemonade and snacks and invited us to hang out and relax. Then, after spending time with the family, we wanted to worship. We all had candles and we all decided to worship in the crashed plane in the candle light. 2 of my old teammates were next to me. One lit his candle just by praying to God. I tried that, too and it worked, but in the middle of singing I accidently blew it out. The teammate on the other side of me offered me a match to re-light my candle, so I did.
Every time I share this dream or think back to it, God gives me a new revelation. Now that I’m home, I feel a bit like the plane crash. I feel broken and lost, and like I was so close to the finish line, but just missed something. Adjusting back into American life, and feel a bit like a square peg in a round hole. I can say what I need to say to fit in, and I can play the part, but I no longer feel like I truly “fit”. So many things have happened at home that I’m discovering all at once and it’s a lot to take in at once, and I just feel like a bit of a mess.
I didn’t think it would be this hard. After spending a month moving from country to country with constantly shifting cultures and languages, what's the difference between a travel day from Ethiopia to Romania and a travel day from Spain to the USA?
The people in Romania didn’t know me. They didn’t know my family, my friends, my past, my failures, my successes. I just got to be a missionary. They saw me in such a pure way, and I had complete control over what they could know about me. I could share everything or nothing, but regardless of how much I shared, they would only know it from my perspective. They wouldn’t hear the gossip from every other angle. They only knew mine, which even in the darkest parts of my testimony, I could lighten up from my perspective if I chose to.
I don’t have that control at home.
Everyone who knows me has an opinion about me, and they know different parts of my story, but they saw it happen, so they all have their own angles, too. Being home, my mind is no longer centered on the Lord, but it’s focused on what other people are thinking about me or saying about me. That was something that wasn’t even on my mind this year because it didn’t need to be. Now I’m suddenly aware of how vulnerable I am just by being around people I know and people who know me.
But what do they know? They know who I was when I was a toddler and how I grew into the 20-something I am today and they knew every step I took to get to this place. They know my family, my friends, my work history. They know a lot about me. But are those the things that define me.
NO.
And I know that now.
So why am I so worried about what they think of me? It's because they don’t know the extent of how God has changed me this year. I’m not an LVC graduate; I’m a worshipper of the most high God, blessed with the opportunity to equip myself to do that to the best of my ability. I’m not a child of Jim and Felecia Summy; I’m a child of the King, blessed with earthly parents who have taught me to love the Lord. I’m not a World Race Alumni; I am a daughter who was called to worship among the nations God opened a door for me to be able to do that.
I am not defined by the things of this world. I am defined by my creator, and I may not have the ability to change what people know about me, but I can change the perspective.
So like the plane crash, I do feel a little bit like a crash landed home, but instead of stepping out of the plane and walking away from it, I’m going to praise God through it, and press into Him and keep my focus on Him. I may feel broken sometimes just from having to adjust to my new life so quick. Unfortunately, we live in a broken world. We were born into brokenness, and the world we see is only, at best, the tip of the iceberg of God’s glory. The only true perfection we can have is when we are living in communion with God. It is only with God that our brokenness is healed, and even if the world breaks us time and time again, God will heal us every time. So I’m not broken. I’m not gonna let the world break me, but that’s my choice. I can choose to run from God when I’m struggling, or run to Him. I know what I want to choose, and I will choose it even when the world tells me not to. I’ve seen too much of God’s glory and felt too much of God’s freedom to go back to how I was before, and I hope that the freedom and power I carry through the Holy Spirit can inspire others to run to God, too.
But it’s easy to just fit a mold, and to just be who people expect you to be, and I hope every time I choose to defy and to be who I know I am. I’d love to say that I’ll choose that every time, but I probably won’t. I already slipped up in that regard, but thank the Lord for grace. I just keep praying that I can live as someone who is changed, and it’s a prayer I’ll probably have to pray every day for a while until it becomes natural again, but I know I have teammates next to me and a God above who will help me along the way.