Something safe

"I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: 'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.' And He replied: 'Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.'"-M.L.Haskins

I am finding myself thinking tonight about the 3 1/2 months and one long plane ride that lay before me. I always tend to think about home when I'm missing things. Our vonage phone has been broken for the past few weeks and that never tends to put me in a very good disposition. My family calls, but it's usually full of static and chats with friends are much fewer and far between when the vonage is broken. It's a small thing, a fixable thing at that--a reminder to be thankful for the ways that I can communicate with those I love on the other side of that body of water--but I'm a social person and I still have very strong attachments to those I love there, so not being able to talk to them, well, it isn't my favorite. Sometimes in my limited perspective, I tend to think that when i'm missing nouns (people, places, and things), that I must be missing out on things. I have come to realize in the past year and a half plus some odd months at this point, that I haven't missed out on a thing. I take that back, I am still realizing the full reality of the fact that I have not missed out on anything. When I'm walking with Him, I don't miss out on things. This is not how it works.
'Praise to the Lord, who o'er all things so wondrously reigneith...Has thou not seen, how thy desires have been granted in what He ordaineth'...
Have I not seen? Two years later of walking with Him intimately in this place and have i not seen?...how can I forget that I have seen. My desires have been and are being granted in what He ordaineth because my desire is to very much resemble someone like David who was a man after God's own heart, who reminded me of the promise that when I'm walking uprightly with Him...I don't miss out on things when he wrote Psalm 84. I realized today that at the end of one journey, I am very much still deep on a journey that will span much further than the plane ride from here to there, learning to realize the promise, the truth and the challenge that lie in Psalm 84:11, "...The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly (NASB,KJV)/whose walk is blameless (NIV)/who do what is right (NLT).
David reminded me that a walk that is upright is to walk in an attitude of: 'For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.' What a reminder of so many things. The things around me will pass away. They're tents, temporary. But my God has a house. He was, and is, and is to come. When I'm walking with Him uprightly, when I'm longing to be in His presence more than to dwell in the outside around me, He doesn't withhold good from me, He never has, and He will not. I have what He wants me to have right now. I can trust Him in that, regardless of what it looks like...whether it's in Turkey or America, whether it resembles what I thought I wanted or not, whether it is the same as what others have around me or not.
How precious this promise is to me as I think about all the things I love, yet all the things I could worry about in going home, if I let my mind overtake me...new relationships with old friends and family, a job, a car, money, singleness, ministry, culture shock, being understood, and so many of the things I strive to surrender daily. In surrender, i am desiring to step out into the darkness of the unknown future that is nearing and put my hand into His hand...for that shall be better to me than a light and safer than a known way. There and only there, is my yielded hand and heart safe.