A Sea-Crossing Pilgrimage

If you have never moved overseas, I highly recommend it.

It is a wonderfully terrifying way to be launched outside your comfort zone, where you can come shaking, overwhelmed, to the Lord. It serves to sift out idols and comforts and figure out who you are in Him and Him alone. It’s an eye-opening, gut-wrenching, astoundingly beautiful process that wears a thousand coats - some old and horrid and some new and comforting. You welcome into your life the unrelenting stream of power adaptors, jet lag, currency conversions, unpalatable foods, enraging traditions, delightful surprises, language differences, and an abundance of misunderstandings. 

Sounds great, right? 

Seriously, it is.

I am in the midst of it yet again. Since leaving high school seven years ago, I have moved twelve times, and either visited or lived in eight different countries. And in a few days I’m moving cross-continentally once more.

Isn't time the funniest of things? It’s been a few months shy of two years since I wrote this post, and yet the words of old me minister to the new one - well, the words and plan of God really. Those are timeless and always true.

It’s been one year since my now-husband and I filed a petition for my US Green Card, which would and will allow me to work, and live, as a married couple, in the United States.

They said, ‘nine months’ and yet here I sit, in the winter of Sydney, Australia, a year later. It’s a strange situation being married to a man who can’t legally be in my country - or I in his. And through no fault of our own, we have been doing long-term marriage for over four months now.

 It’s been a stretch and a marathon challenge – and I have learned a these past few months. About the difference between saying ‘God is in control’, and believing it. About the gap between He works all things for the good of those who love Him, and actually acting in that truth. And about the ever painful lesson of patience, patience, patience, patience.

I am preparing to move back to the United States. To once again leave my family, my friends, my home, my piece of the ocean, and everyone and everything familiar.

I am packing, and culling a lifetime of possessions, and memories, and swallowing and living among the great sea of powerful emotions which seem to envelop me these days. I am thrilled about going, and seeing the face of my sweet husband and the back of this awful bureaucratic nightmare. And in the same breath, I am grieving goodbyes, and feeling loss, and saying farewell to people, to grandparents especially, for most likely, the very last time. How can one tiny human do, and feel all those things at once?

I feel like I can do nothing right now, but cling to the Lord. Cling to Him, and say; ‘God. I can not do this on my own. I need you, I need you, I need you’. And it’s true, not just in words, not just an idea – but in my everyday reality. I. Need. The. Lord.

I need Jesus.

And He is not just my protector, and the promise of good things – but the provider of them.

I am reminded of the verse He gave me as a child, time and time again, not as simply a sweet rhyme as it once was, but as a very real, and deeply comforting reality. Pslam 139: 9-10a, reads:

If I rise of the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. - Psalm 139:9-10a

When it comes to the world of missions, it is seeing the Cross, not crossing the sea that matters... but it sure does help. It brings me to the place that I always should be: complete, courageous trust and dependence. A place where I say ‘yes’ to God, no matter what, no matter where, and no matter how He leads.

The Word is so powerful. I was recently blown away by just one little sentence of Pslam 84:5:

“Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.”

Those who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.

As followers of Jesus, we set our hearts and souls on pilgrimage. Not settling, in or for this world, or what it has to offer. We live in light of what Jesus has done, on a journey, on a wandering, to our true home. To be with the one our heart desires. We are pilgrims on destiny-filled journeys of purpose, worship, joy, and love. And as I move this time, I will cling once again to that truth, to that peace, to the Author of my soul: The One who goes before me and never lets me fall.

Let us all live in light of that truth!

Rebecca Isaacson is a volunteer with Christ For the City International.

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