18. Climax

“I have a book I would like to send you,” she explained when she asked me for my address. I love a friend like that, one that knows you on the heart level and will go the extra step to send you a book that you didn’t even know you needed. 

A few days later The Next Right Thing by Emily P. Freeman showed up in the mail. I am a studious reader, always tracking what I read by underlining the things that stand out to me. So with pen in hand, I started to read and take notes. With every chapter I put pen to paper more and more until I began to think I should just stop before I underlined an entire chapter. 

When I finished the final chapter, I went back through the whole thing and re-read all my underlined sections and notes scribbled in the margins. I thumbed through the pages and began to see all those pen marks as one huge memorial, testifying to everything I had been learning through my year-long process of discernment. 

The emphasis of the book is soul minimalism, meaning the uncluttered state of the soul. Our souls need to be still and at rest before the Lord in order to hear from him. I knew that I had all the information I needed to make a decision, but I also knew that I needed to make that decision from a place of rest, and I just was not there yet.

This book helped me get to that place. Chapter by chapter guided me to get rid of my soul clutter - collections of narratives, expectations, pressure, pros and cons, information, and input from various “gurus”. I got alone with God and let my soul have some space to come to the table and speak. I got back to the real me in the presence of God, expressing my unedited, God-given desires in his presence. I listed what fuels and what drains me, and I looked for arrows instead of answers. 

On that following Tuesday fast and prayer day, I retrieved a sizeable collection of my processing sheets. Throughout the year, I had accumulated no small amount of loose leaf sheets, index cards, and scrap pieces of paper where I jotted everything down that had anything to do with making my decision. Sheets comparing sending agencies. Questions to ask a sending agency. Facts about different parts of the world. My own personal vision statement. Diagrams, charts, lists, arrows and dotted lines trying to compare and connect everything. Hoping that an X would mark the spot. 

It was an impressive spread, and a little alarming. 

Among all the processing sheets was one sheet of paper with a different kind of list. Every Tuesday during my fast, although God never gave me direct and specific clarity to my questions, he often left me with a short spiritual truth — something to be rooted in as I faced uncertainties in my life. At the end of each Tuesday, I could usually express this truth in a short sentence or phrase, and so I kept a running chronological record of those spiritual truths that I wanted to remember. These were the things God revealed to me as I fasted and prayed over the course of an entire year.  

When I found that sheet and read through it, a sense of deep relief and satisfaction washed over me. Have you ever debated over a decision for an entire year? Then when you finally come to the point of decision, it's a climax moment, and that feeling you feel when you finally make that big decision? That’s the feeling that swept over me as I held that record of spiritual truths in my hand. I don’t need to fast and pray anymore, my heart said. This is my answer. 

The entire discernment process of fasting and praying and agonizing and surrendering and searching...it was all for this. I had my answer, and it wasn’t the location that I had originally set out to find. It was a spiritual destination of intimacy with Christ; I had heard his voice. It was documented on that sheet. 

Jesus himself had discipled me through discernment. 

I threw all the other papers away, cleared the table, and neatly folded that one treasured sheet of spiritual truths. I took that sheet and turned it into what you are reading right now. 

The very week that I threw away my processing sheets and started writing down these thoughts — two days later in fact — God gave me unexpected and surprising clarity about where I should go next. 

I wonder if he had just been waiting.