Dependent Transition

I am not a fan of transition. It's uncomfortable and awkward. It is hard and often feels lonely. But I think the hardest part is not knowing when it will be over.

Not knowing when things will settle back down--when your new rhythms and patterns will begin to feel natural.  When both feet will be firmly planted in one spot--no longer straddling a fine line between the new and the old. When what was normal begins to feel like a distant memory and you are able to set your hand to the plow of what is before you. 

These last two years have been almost constant transition. I have moved four times during my ten months in SF. New jobs, new goals, new friends, new home, new church--new everything. Just as soon as I get comfortable, something gets turned upside down and I realize again that I'm just a house of cards waiting for something to blow through. Build, rebuild, rebuild. 

As I peek down at my feet now, praying to finally be on the settled side of that fine line, I find I am still straddling--still in transition. 

But I know the Lord's heart well enough to know none of it is purposeless. He is the One rebuilding-- restructuring me from the ground up. He is the One who stirs deep within me and gives me dreams too big to stay put. He is tenacious in the way that He calls us and has put that same tenacity within me to take Him at His promises and reach to see them accomplished. 

That said,  I sense the Lord is leading me into full-time ministry with Linden Tree Outreach. What is this going to look like? Specific details of my day-to-day are still in the works (lots of prayer going into that from the leadership side), but the majority of my time will be meeting with people for renewal sessions. This is very exciting! And incredibly overwhelming.  I am signing up for a full-time, unpaid, dream job. This will be my first time raising support and frankly there is a part of me that is holding my breath, waiting for it to be over. Putting all of my financial security in Someone else's hands has always been a weakness of mine I'd prefer not to tackle. BUT, here we are, tackling it. And the Lord is calling me to trust Him!

The goal is to be fully supported by July this year. More details to come as I break down the logistics of what this will look like, but MAN would I LOVE some prayer!

I sense there is a lot of teaching and dependency practice coming my way these next few months. It's not surprising as I am stepping into a ministry that also requires a deep level of dependence and trust in the Holy Spirit. 

Please pray:

 -that my heart would truly learn to trust God as Provider and Sustainer

-that He would glorify Himself through this process and use it to shape me for the good of His healing work in SF

-that He would humble me and I would learn to live from a place of consistent dependency on Him

Thank you!!

Sooo, what have I been doing?

After meeting Lindsay and getting involved with Linden Tree Outreach (LTO), it became very clear this ministry was to be my top priority. I felt like I had been given a very precious opportunity to receive as much training and practice as I was willing to invest, and I did not take that gift lightly.

I have given as much time to this ministry as I have physically, spiritually and emotionally been able to. 

What has that looked like?

A big chunk of this has been serving in what we call "renewal sessions." A typical session consists of the person receiving from the Lord accompanied by one leader and one intercessor. The majority of my time thus far has been spent interceding. It has been absolutely amazing! The lessons the Lord has taught me through this role are invaluable. I am constantly being reminded by how much He desires to communicate His love and care for us. His closeness and attention to detail in each of our lives is astounding.

I started to see this play out in some of my earliest sessions. On one such occasion, I sensed the Lord had given me a very clear picture for the person we were praying for. I silently mouthed over to the leader of the session that I had something to share. She gave me a wink and a gentle, "shhhh." No more than a minute later, the recipient was describing in great detail the exact same picture I had seen for her.

Something became very clear in that moment--the goal was for this woman to connect with God. 

His top priority is relationship, and close relationships involve communication--on both sides. He wants to make it incredibly clear that we all can have an intimate relationship with Him; a relationship in which we can see and hear Him for ourselves.  It is wonderful when someone hears from the Lord for you (and there is definitely a time and place for that), but how sweet to be assured of the fact that He desires to speak right to you. So that should be also our goal-- helping that person connect with the Lord directly. And how encouraging to have that confirmed so clearly through another person hearing the same Voice?

My time with Linden Tree has also included receiving a lot of inner healing training and mentoring. I meet regularly with one of our leaders to receive my own sessions (most of my understanding of inner healing tools has come through my own healing and revelation of God's love for me personally), ask questions, study inner healing material, and spend a lot of time seeking the Lord in our ministry and lives. We also have monthly team meetings (my personal favorite day of the month) in which there is an element of training and Q&A, we seek the Lord on our upcoming sessions, ministry, etc, and spend time interceding for each other. Our team recently traveled to Nashville to attend a Heart Sync training by Father Andrew Miller. Heart Sync is the primary healing method that we use at Linden Tree (I'll go into that in more detail at a later point). For now, I'll just say it BLEW.OUR.MINDS. 

*Let me also address the issue of survival and student loans (cause that stuff is kinda important). Around the same time I signed on with LTO, I met a girl at church who offered me her full-time nanny job on the spot. She had been praying for another Christian to take her place. I interviewed with the family and had the job by the end of the week. I am thankful it pays the bills and has allowed me (to a certain degree) to focus my energy on learning about inner healing ministry, but I sense my nanny days are coming to an end as the Lord moves me into more work with Linden Tree Outreach (more on this later). 

Lindsay Nelson

I prayed a lot about what my life in San Francisco was going to look like. I figured since the Lord was so clearly sending me, He must have a pretty good reason for doing so. I would really like to know what that reason was...beforehand. 

Unfortunately for the planner side of me, He didn't say much. I did have an unusual amount of peace for someone about to move with no job, a month's worth of rent, and murky/no direction--but that was about it. 

One thing was highlighted though, and that was the name "Lindsay Nelson." 

I had met Lindsay briefly during an internship I had done at Youth With a Mission SF several years back. We had overlapped only a couple weeks before I went back to school, so I had never gotten the chance to know her. It seemed pretty random, but I slid it in my back pocket to investigate later. 

Find Lindsay Nelson, I scribbled in my journal. 

That task was easier than expected, as the day I move to the city I ran right into her on the sidewalk.

A little thrown off, I asked her to meet and we sat down the next day. Turns out, she is pioneering Lindentree Outreach, a ministry focusing on creating space for the Holy Spirit to meet with people and transform hearts as a result. Renewal prayer, inner healing, prayer ministry... call it what you will. The goal is connection with Jesus. Leading people into deeper knowledge of God and our truest selves. Letting the Lord heal each part of their hearts and bring them into wholeness and unity with Himself and each other. 

That meeting with Lindsay was an answer to a prayer I hadn't been able to formulate into words. The ministry, the focus, the goals all fit me like a glove. I couldn't sign up fast enough. I found myself in an inner healing training the next day before boxes were even unpacked. 

Let me just interrupt right here with a brief history lesson:

I was a Psychology major at Westmont College. I went through every possibility of what I could do with that and tried them all on for size. Some avenues of the therapy world got close, but still seemed to lack something I couldn't quite put my finger on. I interned with Christian counselors, picked the brains of Child Life Specialists, and was counseled by some of the most gifted MFTs. Yet, I could not understand or see healing methods as fully effective without the help of the Holy Spirit. (I am not in any way discrediting therapy or psycho-therapy. On the contrary, I see the incredible value and role they play in the healing world. But what became more and more apparent was that all real, lasting, and complete healing comes from God. He is the only One that can change hearts at their core, completely redeem our experiences, and heal us of pain/trauma.)

During my senior year of college a mentor referred me to a man by the name of Joseph Dalton with Healing for the Heart Ministry (HFTH). Joseph uses an approach to healing that focuses on allowing the Spirit of God to speak peace and love back into damaged hearts. A picture of this approach is beautifully described in Joseph's bio: 

"...the Spirit of God kept revealing to Joseph that the healing of hearts and the mending of hearts and lives would be done through this heart whispering approach with people – that love is what heals people...He realizes now that this approach isn’t taught in schools or found in books, but rather it comes from and through the Person of Love. When Love Himself encounters the human heart, the healing that can occur far exceeds anything man can produce in his own resources." 

Receiving this inner healing ministry from HFTH was the most transformative experience in my relationship with the Lord to date. I encountered the Person of Love as Joseph describes, and learned of His love for me. He healed parts of my heart that were in deep pain and addressed the numbness I had used to self protect. He revealed where He was in some of the darkness moments of my life, and brought true restoration there. 

He also planted something in me during that time; a hunger for that same depth of healing and intimacy for other people. I knew that what I had received was not a typical counseling experience, but in some way far surpassed the length that any amount of therapy could have reach. I was ruined for anything less. The Healer himself healed me. [Hallelujah]

--End of history lesson--

So with that in mind, you can see why this seemingly casual encounter with Lindsay was kind of a big deal for me. Up until this point, I had yet to find an outlet or training ground in which to practice and learn more about heart healing. And all the while, the Lord was preparing a place for just that. 

(Lindsay and I in Redding, CA for a team meeting)

I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

Recently, I dropped most things in life and moved to San Francisco. Now this may not seem very surprising to you, since it appears to be the hot trend these days. But unlike the plethora of young, driven, intellectual individuals with $6 pour over coffee that have rushed to the soil of apparently endless possibility-- I have come with no such plan and (don't kill me) a can of Folger's. 

However, I did come with something. It is profound and powerful enough to make me leave my most favorite place to move to one of my least favorite places (that I am currently aware of).  This "thing" that first prompted me to pack up and move was the soft, undeniable and irrefutable whisper of the Holy Spirit. 

I fought Him for awhile--I was perfectly content and sure that I was experiencing the abundance of what He had for me. But as soon as I surrendered to the Voice and His leadership, like a waterfall I was drown in the sweet presence and assurance of God. His love would hit at the most unexpected times, and for weeks I would weep at the drop of a hat just thinking of His consistency and faithfulness towards me. How could I forget so easily that to be where He is is the greatest joy and to go where He calls is the most life-giving adventure? 

That one thing is enough. That call is worth everything. 

My life is very up in the air at the present moment, and I am trying my best to wait patiently until it comes back down (not looking like it's going to be in the foreseeable future). I find myself often muttering, I have no idea what I'm doing. But thankfully, HE DOES and happens to be in control of all that stuff we threw in the air together. 

And He has a way of really glorifying Himself so wonderfully in the messiness of life. I want to glorify Him with my personal mess; with my story. So as it unfolds, I'll write it down. 

Feel free to praise Him with me.