I'm home in West Virginia for the week, helping my family settle in to their new house. Last week I graduated college. I spent the week of graduation watching my roommates pack, and I also helped a few friends move in to their new apartments. In August, I'll be moving all my stuff from DC to store in West Virginia, while I spend a year at the University of Granada in Granada, Spain with Assemblies of God World Missions.
As I was moseying along in my beloved Honda Civic yesterday on my way to CVS, I switched into autopilot mode.
Not to scare ya'll; I mean I was still driving the car.
Do you ever do that? Surely you do. One moment you're driving along and thinking about the cars in front of you and the "separate the hazards" rule they teach you in Driver's Ed. Next thing you know, time passes and something snaps you out of this reverie that had apparently consumed you. You're suddenly hyper-aware of the traffic in your midst, and of your hand on the wheel. You realize you had been consumed with the thoughts or memories or images or to-do lists running through your your mind instead of the road.
Ya, you know. You know what I'm talking about.
So anyhow yes, this happened to me.
In my reverie, I kept returning to this image: hermit crabs. I realized that, well… we're a lot alike, hermit crabs and me. Hermit crabs change shells all the time. When the largest crab outgrows his shell, he moves into a new shell, and the second biggest crab moves in to his recently vacated shell, and so on. They move down the line, all the way down to the smallest hermit crab.
It feels weird and awkward at first to try the new shell on for size, and sometimes I wonder if a bigger crab is gonna come along and steal my place. What if I'm not ready to move to a new country for a year? Shouldn't someone else more prepared and brave and stable and talented take the spot? What if I miss people too much? What if this dream is, well, just a dream? What if I fail?
What if.
What if I never said those two words again to express fear over what could be, but rather used them to speak potential over what is.
What if failure was instead not trying at all? What if it's not about me? What if I'm just the means to the end? What if I'm living for the applause of nail-scarred hands? (Thank you Mark Batterson.) What if I need to vacate in order for others to rise up?
I'm running afraid but contentedly toward the grandeur of adventure and purpose.
Pursuing things that make me uncomfortable make me dependent on God, and give me more adventure than I could ever create for myself.
Four years ago, God moved me up to AU when I thought I wasn't ready. They have been the most transformative years of my life.
Now, I'm movin' on.
If I were chasing dreams, I'd be disappointed with the life of a hermit crab.
No place would ever be big enough.
So I guess that is the cool thing about chasing God.
God-sized dreams may keep us on our toes, but they are never too small.
