Some people have asked how my sabbatical went. The only way to describe it is a time of drenching rain on parched soil...I guess after 15 years of ministry, it was very parched! I’ve heard people speak like that before and just thought they were either hokey or outright lying to make themselves sound more spiritual. I do have to share that it is possible, but it does take time and space to detox from ourselves to be able to listen.
I started off my sabbatical time by taking an 8 day trip into the wilderness...otherwise known as solo-camping. I knew that I would need to completely disconnect from people and from electronics, and I didn't think that I would have the self-control necessary to do that unless it was completely forced upon me. So I strapped a tent and a backpack full of food to my back and hiked out to camp near a few different waterfalls in East Tennessee.
The first two days felt like I was a drug addict who was in detox mode, but I was just detoxing from myself. The only image that fits is like a cat just caught in a burlap sack trying to free himself. I would hike and then set something up and then cook and then walk and then read and then sit in the hammock and then and then and then! But I seriously ran out of things to do and my mind was on fire with so many thoughts and concerns. Even at night, I didn't sleep well...partially from the ranger who freaked me out that there had been lots of snakes and bears lately...but also because my mind wouldn't allow me to rest.
The third day into it, there was a beautiful break through. I was reading through two books at the same time (Invitation to Solitude and Silence by Ruth Haley Barton and Running on Empty by Fil Anderson) and they were both reaching the same point of creating that time and space, inviting Holy Spirit to come and speak truth. So I grabbed my hammock again, found two trees (one of the trees was actually rotting, but I didn't notice until after!), strung it up, and I sat there. It ended up being about 3 hours to just sit with myself, asking Holy Spirit to join me. I had shared with a friend before leaving that one of my deepest fears during the sabbatical would be that I would "show up" and God wouldn't. Well, He showed up! The truth that He shared with me during that time was just "I am here," which is all that I needed at that moment. The more time and space that I was willing to give, the more He showed up, which just indicated that it wasn't God who wasn't showing up, but I was ignoring His constant invitation.
On day 5, I hiked further into the woods, so I was about 7 miles from any human being. That alone is kind of scary...the bear and snake reminder from the ranger definitely kept popping up in my head! After that hike and setting up my tent again, I was sitting in my hammock in the afternoon and I felt a few sprinkles. Since my hammock doubled as my blanket at night, I decided to put everything in my tent and right then the heavens opened. It poured for over an hour and I received the beautiful surprise that the tent I had borrowed was not water proof, so there was a river of living water flowing through the tent! I piled my things onto the sleeping pad that was floating in the middle and just laughed. I had to unzip the front flap so that the water could pour out...there was literally nothing I could do. After a while, it stopped and I was able to go wash my clothes in the river and set them out to dry.
At this point, it had been 5 days of not talking to people. I am an introvert by nature and I had always assumed that I could be one of those hermits that lives on an island by himself. Well, by the end of day 5, I was missing my family like crazy and missing human interaction. Right as it started getting dark, there was a couple (Michael and Falon) who showed up. At that point, I was starved for human interaction, soaking wet, and couldn't get my fire started for dinner. So I went and introduced myself and we were able to start a quick friendship. There were no fires that night since the wood was too wet, although we all tried for hours, but the following day we were able to spend time exploring the caves, which I wasn't about to do by myself. The caves went on for miles and the conversations that we had were so vulnerable and raw. Both of them had been in church when they were younger, but had been hurt by the masks and pettiness of Christians. It was beautiful to talk about who the Trinity and the body of Christ are for me and how different that can be from the Christian church, as sad as that may be. We did finally get a fire started the night of the 6th day after a few hours and it was glorious to eat hot food and dry out my shoes!
They were planning on leaving the next day and had heard on the forecast that it was supposed to pour rain. The campsite on my last day was going to be right next to the river, so I decided to hike out with them and leave a day early. Those were both really good excuses to leave, but my real reason was that I really missed Ximena and the kids and wanted to be home. After a few hours to hike out, I made it back to the car, just in time for it to pour down rain for hours as I was driving back to Memphis. Boy was I glad not to be in the tent with living water flowing through it!!!
The rest of my sabbatical was similar in many ways. I would go upstairs to one of our God's rooms or go to the backyard to be in the hammock. From about 9-4 everyday, I would read, listen to podcasts or worship, cook a few international recipes, catch up with friends, or meet and debrief with the guides that God had given me (He provided a pastor/missionary, professional counselor, and two guys who know how to ask amazing, heart-wrenching questions). God continued to break down walls, open compartments of my soul, and dig/sift through roots in my life. Like I shared with our missionaries, it was painful, exhausting, and confusing at points...and still continues to be...but it is amazing how we have a comforter and teacher who actually lives inside of us to lead through that process.
As a part of my sabbatical, I had started to do regular trail running. Honestly, I do not usually like running and it is usually a more forced practice, but I was able to find about 15 miles of trails through the woods close to our house and it became more enjoyable. At the same time, my Uncle Mark has been running marathons for our ministry for the past 13 years and I had a strong desire at the beginning of the year to join him in 2021, so it involved training for that. As a part of the training, I was able to run a 10-miler in September to help raise money from Youth Villages. And if you want to help out with our Marathon Fundraiser in two months, you can click HERE!
I had also become involved with Youth Villages here in Memphis, which cares for foster children and actually has a large orphanage of about 120 youth about a mile from our house that we were never aware of. They have a mentoring program for their kids, where I was able to go and meet with one of the kids and create a relationship. I was assigned to a 17-year-old boy named Alex. It has definitely been an experience so far!!! Alex is a runner, in the sense that he has escaped two times since I began the relationship, which then he gets put in "solitary" where he can't have visitors (It reminded me a lot of the time when Gustavo, our oldest, ran away from the orphanage and showed up on our doorstep!). Whenever we are able to meet, it has been a great time for him to teach me chess and a bunch of card games. He has been moved to four different states so far over the past few years and sadly he is being moved again. He is excited to go back to Virginia, as it will be a group home for his last year before he ages out and within an hour of where his mom lives, but it will be one more move. Please be praying for his transition and for people who can come into his life that can speak truth into his life. Also, please pray for the next teenager who will be assigned to me and our relationship that will develop.
Right around the middle of the sabbatical, I went to Chicago for training that I am receiving through Moody on Spiritual Formation. This was something that has been in the works for over a year, but it just so happened that the first weekend course was in the middle of my sabbatical. It was so incredibly beautiful! It was so amazing to be with 20 other individuals who are actively seeking growth and depth in their relationship with God. The facilitator, Nancy Kane, is a Moody professor and author (her book Stages of the Soul is great!) who had experienced going through the motions as a Christian and a great amount of suffering, which finally led her to seeking Him on a whole new level. As a part of the curriculum, we are required to pray daily for an hour and set aside about another hour daily to go deep with Christ through scripture, art, books, articles, liturgical prayers, and journaling. It is the best homework that I have ever had!!! It is a two-year program with 4 weekends each year as a group in Chicago and the remaining assignments are focused on individual soul work. It is truly a blessing to be a part of the program.
Also, there were three trips in the middle of it all. First, after experiencing the amazing waterfalls in East Tennessee, I just had to take Ximena and the kids back there. So a week after the first solo-camping trip, we were able to go back to Fall Creek Falls, but this time minus the "holy water tent" and in a camper...definitely more Ximena's style of camping (Special thanks to Jose Alexis and Yessica...some really close friends/family who lent us their camper). It was so much fun to be together and have them experience some of the places where God spoke to me. Second, we were able to rent an AirBnb close to the beach with Ximena's family. Her parents had never seen white sand and clear blue water, so it was priceless to be there for that experience. Sally decided to join us while we were there...Hurricane Sally that is...which was an experience! We were still able to enjoy pockets of time that the sun would come out or it wouldn't be raining. Actually, the family pictures were all taken just minutes before the full force of the storm hit. Third, we were able to head to Dallas to meet my new niece and nephew...I'm an uncle again! My cousins are in the process of adopting two kids who are just right around Santi and Lani's age, so we went down for a few days to meet them. It was a beautiful time to spend with Gigi and Uncle Randy, Britt, and Kristen and David and their babies.
Ximena has shared a few times that she wished that my sabbatical hadn't been in the middle of lockdowns and quarantines. It did force adjustments to be made, like not being able to go to a monastery, travel, or take part in a few programs that I wanted to. It also forced us to plan and cook ahead of time to avoid restaurants when we travelled and having to wear a mask for 12 hours at a time while in Chicago. It meant taking two weeks of my sabbatical to sit down with Santiago to figure out what virtual school looks like when you have 6 teachers in Middle School. But it also allowed me to figure out how to incorporate lessons that God was teaching me into daily life. And Ximena was a rockstar in this all...trying to give me the time and space that I needed to go deep.
There are now new patterns that God has been teaching me to invite Him into the mundane and daily tasks. Some of it involves putting boundaries around electronics and tasks that I would put before my relationship with Him. Some of it involves allowing Him to lead in our relationship and spending more time in discernment of His will...this is hard because I don't trust Him easily. Some of it involves going deeper in relationship with those who are around me and throwing the to-do list out the window...this is hard because I am such a perfectionist. Someone recently shared shock at a few of the boundaries in place and that it sounded too "Monkish." At first, I wanted to defend myself against that statement, but after looking at the definition of Monk as "a man who has withdrawn from the world for religious reasons," I will gladly accept that comment.
I was sent this passage a few days ago from Romans 12:1-2, which says "So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."
There are so many things from myself and my culture that I fit into without thinking and were dragging me into their immaturity. I was sharing with a friend that the objective of the Moody program is to be one of those "weird" individuals who it's scary to talk to, because you know they are so close to God that they can see through the masks you are wearing. So as we continue to stay in the world, but not accepting what it shares as truth, I am ready to be called weird, monkish, or a radical if it means a deeper relationship with Him.
I would like to thank each of you who prayed or sent me letters. It was so incredibly encouraging! It was very evident that many people were praying and the protection that I experienced during this time! Love each one of you so much!
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