1 - Brave

I rolled over in bed and saw the clock ticking away. It was 2:00 in the morning on July 20th, 2014 and I was wide awake. I had been twisting and turning in bed as one fear after another rolled through my mind and gripped my heart.  In just a few short hours, I would be on a plane to Tel Aviv, Israel. I was going to spend the next year as a preschool teacher at a school in a small Arab town in the West Bank.  I’d felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation as the date of my departure grew closer.  Now, I was having a major case of cold feet. 

I had just graduated college with a degree in English Literature and a minor in Arabic in May. Arabic was a random course choice and, initially, I enrolled in it because a college crush convinced me to take the class with him and a group of friends. It didn’t hurt that I would fulfill my language credits along the way. As it turned out, I loved it and continued taking it until I graduated, getting a minor. All of my friends, however, absolutely hated it. Granted, it was a hard class that demanded a lot of time and effort.  Personally, I was fascinated by the beauty of this rhythmic, poetic language.  Learning a new alphabet by connecting sounds with symbols was exciting for me.  It was like becoming a kid again and learning to read.  Needless to say, this class captured my attention, pushed me to study hard, and spend time with Arabs I met on campus. This one class pushed me into a completely different world. 

While I studied Arabic, my interest in the Middle East grew.  Just before I graduated, I was looking for opportunities to live abroad and teach English, especially in an Arabic speaking country.  Through my church in Fayetteville, I was connected to a family living in the West Bank who worked at a local school there. Josh and Cathy Young had been living in the West Bank for 6 years and were recruiting English teachers. I met up with them a few times when they came home to visit and discussed what it would look like to move there and work at the school with them.  

I had a few other options that I was looking into and spent a few months praying about what I should do. What made my decision were a few “God stories”.  They both happened on the same day when I took a weekend trip home to Little Rock where my parents live. As soon as I got home, my mom told me that a few houses down, our neighbors had a visitor who taught English in the West Bank and was home on furlough. We decided to go meet her and, after asking a few questions, we realized that she had been recruited by the same couple that was recruiting me and worked at the same school they had worked at in years past. She had gone to the same church I was going to in Fayetteville and made the same connection I was in the process of making now. 

She was home from the West Bank for just a few months and was visiting friends and supporters.  She just happened to be in Little Rock at the same time as me and was randomly visiting a family a few houses down the street while I was home. 

As if I still needed more confirmation, that night I was praying that God would continue to direct me in making a decision.  I thanked him for the obvious nudge towards teaching in the West Bank but asked for more direction. I walked downstairs and picked up my phone only to realize I had a missed call and a voicemail from Josh Young asking if I had thought anymore about teaching with them in the West Bank the coming year. 

I was shocked. I couldn’t believe that all in one night I would hear so clearly where God was directing me. I called Josh back and told him about meeting the other teacher down the street.  We both marveled at the wildness of that situation and prayed that God would continue to speak to us about where he was leading.

A few weeks later, after more prayer and discussions, I decided to pull the trigger and commit to teaching in the West Bank for a year. From that point on, I began raising support, attending meetings, and preparing as best as I could for this new season.

I was truly excited about this new life stage and had spent a lot of time preparing for it. Our departure date was at the end of July, but as the summer continued on, tensions in the Holy Land began to heat up. 

At the beginning of July, a fresh war broke out between Israel and Palestine. Clashes began to erupt more frequently and three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered.  A Palestinian teenager was found murdered in a Jerusalem forest days later.  Hamas (the Palestinian Islamic group governing in Gaza) was firing rockets from Gaza, and Israel was responding with stronger force and a more intense military presence in the Palestinian Territories.

As I read these stories, my excitement quickly gave way to fear. Something that was a dream, had so suddenly become a nightmare of war, riots, and death. I was excited to teach, learn Arabic, learn a new culture, meet new Arab friends, and potentially start a life of working in the Middle East, but I was not prepared for a war. “Counting the cost” was a fun topic to talk about before you’re actually having to do it.  Was I really going to go to an unstable place and live for a year? Was I really going to leave my family for a year and live in a place completely foreign to me?  Why did I sign up for this? Is there any way for me to get out of this? What was I thinking when I said I wanted to do this? 

As our departure date came near, I prayed hard about where God was leading me. It was clear to me, though, that God was keeping the doors open.  Our team leaders had kept us updated on the situation and gave us the “go ahead” to go as planned at the end of July. As much of a relief as it would have been for God to have shut those doors, they were still wide open, and I felt his encouragement that this was still what he had for me. 

So, as I sat up at 2:00 in the morning, about to leave my home for a foreign country at war, I opened my Bible and flipped randomly through Psalms. I landed in Psalm 118 and read: 

“Out of my distress I called on the Lord;

    the Lord answered me and set me free.

The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.

    What can man do to me?

 The Lord is on my side as my helper;

    I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.

 It is better to take refuge in the Lord

    than to trust in man.

 It is better to take refuge in the Lord

    than to trust in princes…

…I was pushed hard, so that I was falling,

    but the Lord helped me.

The Lord is my strength and my song;

    He has become my salvation.

Glad songs of salvation

    are in the tents of the righteous:

“The right hand of the Lord does valiantly,

     the right hand of the Lord exalts,

    the right hand of the Lord does valiantly!”

 I shall not die, but I shall live,

    and recount the deeds of the Lord.

 The Lord has disciplined me severely,

    but he has not given me over to death.

Open to me the gates of righteousness,

    that I may enter through them

    and give thanks to the Lord.

 This is the gate of the Lord;

    the righteous shall enter through it.”

Psalm 118: 5-23

I could feel these words soothe my trembling heart. The words that encouraged me the most were in verse 17: “I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord”.  As I read that, I felt the Lord assure me that he will be with me in trouble and that he had life for me, not death. I was afraid of death. I was afraid of never seeing my family again. I was afraid I would be like Jim Elliot and countless others who have given their lives in the path of obedience. 

In the last month at home, while the war had been going on and getting global attention, people told me that I was brave.  I didn’t feel brave, though. I feel obedient. Painfully, fearfully obedient.  People told me, “God will protect you” or “the safest place for you to be is in God's will”.  While I believed those things to an extent, I was beginning to realize that many times what I think of as “protection” is not what God thinks of as protection, and what I think of as “safety” is not always God's idea of safety. I was not under the delusion that because I was obedient to God, he would protect me from harm or death.  He didn’t do that for Jim Elliot, or Paul, or most of the disciples for that matter. What does it look like for me to be obedient to God in a place at war? What is the story God is writing for me? I was afraid of what was ahead and I knew my definition of protection and safety needed to change. 

But for that night, God had spoken to me. He has reassured my heart and gave me a verse to cling to in the midst of my fear. I was encouraged, but still afraid. I put my Bible away, rolled over, and tried to fall asleep as the clock ticked unrelentingly onward.