I had a dream last night I can’t shake. I pay attention to those these days.

I was talking with a young woman, whose name I couldn’t recall, but she knew me. She was just about to graduate from college and was scared of loneliness. She knew her choices would inevitably cause drift from people she loved, and she wanted to hunker down in her current life. But graduation was coming. So she laid out a few options and asked what I thought.

I gave her my standard answer.

“I have no idea.”

This woman was clearly the daughter of some friends. I’d just spent the night at their kooky home/restaurant with the Central American vibe, but didn’t run into her until the morning. As she walked me to my car, I said to her:

“I don’t know what you should do, but I do know that any decision you make out of fear or to avoid some scary, unknown territory is the wrong one.”

Then I woke up.

The subconscious is funny isn’t it?

On Friday night, I made a decision to go forward with something that’s been scaring me for months. It requires a lot from me, things I’m not sure I have, and I have no idea how it’s going to work out.

But as I said once, right here on this blog, the Lord is trustworthy but if we remain hermetically sealed inside a world we can easily handle, we give him no opportunity to prove it. 

I believe this is how the Lord grows us up. This is how he’s growing me up, drawing me out of the shallows into the deep, where I’ve got no choice but to fix my eyes and walk. 

For weeks I’ve sensed the Lord saying: I know it scares you, but do it anyway. It’s how you’ll learn I’m right behind you, holding you up, whispering in your ear, this is the way, walk in it.  

More than anything, this is the faith I want for my life.

Leaping Tiger Gorge. China.

When in our tightly controlled (and let’s admit it, often boring) Western lives do we make those leaps? I don’t, then I wander around wingeing at God,

“Why don’t you show up and be real?”

Why don’t you show up and do something you actually need me for? 

I want, on a daily basis, to leap from the cliffs of fear-based life management and fly into the wild, so I know what it is to lose my breath and catch it again, to be astonished by the broad and capable arms that hold me.

I didn’t decide to go forward out of fear. I decided because the potential in this move delights me. And that, to me, is the voice of God.