Counting the Cost

“This is true joy in life, the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” --George Bernard Shaw

Last night was another sleepless night.  Chris and I went to bed around 10:30pm and I woke up startled around 11:30pm.  I opened my eyes and could feel my heart pounding in my chest.  I thought I'd heard Lucy crying so I got out of bed and walked down the hall to her bedroom door.  The crying stopped.  I walked back to bed and got back under the covers.  I was determined to get back to sleep but my mind started going again.  I kept hearing sounds.  I could hear the girls crying even when they weren’t crying.  I got out of bed a few more times and walked to their doors.  Were they crying, or was it just in my head?  

By 12:30am I decided to take a Benadryl--a little addiction I’ve acquired since Chris left for Afghanistan this past summer.  There was only one pill left in the bottle.  I took it out and swallowed it.  I went back to bed.  

Two hours passed.  I was still awake.  Tossing and turning.  Angry.  Why couldn’t I sleep?  I started to panic as I watched the early morning hours tick, tick, tick away.  By 2:30am, I was too restless to stay in bed.  I finally accepted that I couldn’t force sleep, and that the harder I tried to find it, the more it would escape me.  

I went out to the family room and turned on the fireplace.  I stood in the middle of the room for a while, wondering what to do with myself.  I couldn’t turn on the TV.  We cancelled cable last week and there was no House Hunters or Million Dollar Matchmaker to soothe my worried mind.  I bundled up in blankets and decided to pull the book “Crazy Love” off my desk.  If I couldn’t sleep, I might as well read.  

Last night we had thirteen people in our family room for our church growth group.  It was the first night of a new church-wide study we are starting on Francis Chan’s “Crazy Love.”  I have been really excited about the study and the new places of growth we’ll experience both as individuals and as a church body.  

I lay down on the couch and opened my book.  I was already five chapters in and it was starting to get good.  I read for about an hour, and as I read, I kept thinking more and more about this adoption.  I thought about all the fear I have, all the angst and worry and stress that I can’t seem to shake.  As I read, I started to wonder if God had woken me up because He had something to show me--something He wanted me to think about--something important enough to lose sleep over.  

I came across a part of the book where Chan talks about Christ’s call to His disciples to follow Him.  He told them not to even go home and gather up belongings--He told them they needed to just stop what they were doing and FOLLOW.  No good-byes, no chance to tie up loose ends.  Just follow and trust.  Leave the lives they’d always known and walk into the unknown with Him.  

Chan writes,

“This place of trust isn’t a comfortable place to be; in fact, it flies in the face of everything we’ve been taught about proper planning.  We like finding refuge in what we already have rather than in what we hope God will provide.  But when Christ says to count the cost of following Him, it means we must surrender everything.  It means being willing to go without an extra tunic or a place to sleep at night, and sometimes without knowing where we are going.  God wants us to trust Him with abandon.  He wants to show us how He works and cares for us.  He wants to be our refuge.”

This paragraph struck me.  The words count the cost hit me.  When has following Christ ever cost me anything?  What have I had to give up or leave behind in order to follow Him?  What have I ever had to surrender?  Have I ever really followed?  

I was talking with my friend Tracy yesterday morning.  She asked me what this adoption will cost us.  It will cost our whole family.  As I pour myself out to our son, I will not be able to give as much to my girls.  They will feel it.  They will probably feel like I’ve abandoned them in places.  Chris will feel it as I rely on Him more to help me with everything.  I will need him more.  We will need each other more.  But I also thought about what it will cost me, and this is where I really start to feel afraid.

We all have things we don’t want to let go of.  We tell God, You can have everything, but not that.  I don’t know that we consciously tell Him this, but it comes out in the way we live our lives.  I don’t think I’ve ever surrendered ALL OF ME to God.  As I sat awake last night, I felt His hot pursuit of me, I felt Him calling me out of the dark places where I’ve refused to let Him in.  I felt Him saying come dear child, follow Me, trust Me where you’ve never trusted Me before.  

Ever since I was a little girl, I would retreat into myself, into quiet places that no one else could come when life felt scary or chaotic.  I found solace in aloneness and isolation.  When my family dysfunction felt like too much, I would cower away to my bedroom and play by myself.  I would draw or play with my dolls.  Sometimes I would go the basement of our house and play with Barbie dolls alone for hours and hours on end.  I would try to create a quiet, tranquil place where the chaos couldn’t come.  It sometimes felt lonely, but it always felt safe.

As life has gone on, I’ve continued to revert back to that pattern.  I am not a little girl anymore, but she still shows up.  She still retreats and hides when life feels like too much, when she doesn’t want to enter into the dysfunction, when she doubts she has the strength it takes to show up.  I have always been a quiet and sensitive person, and in my fear, I’ve been able to create silent, withdrawn places for myself to retreat to.  I have been able to care for myself in these places.  As long as I could create and exist in these safe places, I didn’t really need God to show up.

Overtime, I’ve grown weary of these places.  They are safe...and they are lonely and empty.  When I go to these places I hold myself back from the people around me and from God.  I hurt my husband and my children in my isolation--in my addiction to taking care of myself.  

In the early hours of this morning, when sleep wouldn’t come and all I could feel was the crushing fear of the future, I started to realize the central thing I’m so scared of.  I started to understand that to really follow Christ, I will have to surrender my desire to care for myself.  I started to cry this morning as I realized that bringing our boy home will cost me this.  I will have to be totally present for him, for my family.  I will not have pockets of time or space in my schedule anymore that I can rely on when I want to tap out of life, and I’m afraid that if I don’t keep these places for myself, I will break.  

In my life, I have learned to be my own refuge.  I know that if we do this adoption--if we follow His clear Call for our lives--I will not have that option anymore.  I will need God to carry me, to be my refuge, because this thing will require more of me than I think I’ve ever had to give or even know how to give.

Francis Chan writes that God “calls us to trust Him so completely that we are afraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through.”  I know I will be in trouble--that my whole family will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through.  I feel a deep sense of terror in my gut as I consider what this looks like for our family because I’ve never lived like this before.  

But I’m ready.  I’m really ready to follow Him.  I’m so tired of doubting Him and setting my own standards and limitations for my life.  I’m so tired of saying “no” to Him.  I know it will be hard and I know that I have no idea how hard it will be, but there is no turning back.

Chan writes, “The idea of holding back certainly didn’t come from Scripture.”  

The gospel is all about pouring yourself out for others...even unto death.  It’s all about love--loving God and loving others.  And love is never about withholding or protecting oneself.  

Over the holidays, Chris and I watched the Lord of the Rings Trilogy again.  There is a scene from the final movie, The Return of the King, when the Elf King is telling Aragorn, the heir to the throne of men, to stop being the ranger and become who he was born to be.

In Christ, we become who we were born to be. In Christ, we are our truest selves. In Christ, we surrender safety, comfort, and providing for ourselves because life in Him is grander, riskier, and crazier than anything we could ever imagine.  In Christ, I cannot continue to be the loner I’ve always been. 

At the end of the movie, King Aragorn and his army of men are outside the gates of Mordor waiting to fight in what seems like a losing battle against evil. They are fighting for their friend Frodo, who carries with him their last hope for goodness to endure. They know they aren't powerful enough to take down evil on their own, and that they will probably lose their lives in the battle, but they know it is their only chance at life and freedom. Aragorn tells his troops,

“I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me.  A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day.  This day we fight.”

I know it might sound corny, but I am ready to fight. I am ready to fight for goodness and holiness and love in a dead and dying world. I am ready to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves. I am ready be who I was born to be. I am ready to follow Him into the unknown. I am ready to go get our boy.

How is He asking you to follow Him?  What will it cost?