How is This My Life?!

I am currently sitting on a couch in an apartment in Malaysia. I have the most beautiful view of the ocean out our 11th story window, a kitchen so I can cook healthy food, and air conditioning. I think this is the first time I have felt truly comfortable and at home since I left for the World Race. There have been moments of comforts experienced here and there and many times of my soul at rest but this is the first time my body has felt safe. Safe enough to let my guard down, and I think safe enough to let it finally hit me that I am all the way across the world on a tiny island in Malaysia. 

How in the world did I go from ‘California Girl’ just going through the motions to ‘World Traveler’ constantly wrecked by God? 

I believe God has been writing this story my whole life but He clued me in on a really important piece of it about 4 years ago. I had fallen into a pretty deep depression and had really given up on life. I had failed out of school several times, I did not have very many healthy relationships and I felt hopeless. My family decided to move to Kauai that summer (thank you bro for letting us follow you!) and I knew if I didn’t go with them, my life may have just ended that summer. I think God knew it too, so miraculously I ended up being able to go, found a job right away and started my journey back to healthy and whole without even realizing it. 

I had started to run to the beach every day and would stop at this little harbor to stare out over the ocean and pray. I see God a lot in the ocean so moving to an island was a great way to find Him. On two of these runs I had weird moments where I stopped and prayed and God gave me these life flashes before my eyes that I guess you would call visions. In the first one, He showed me all the times I had ever moved in my life. It was like I was reliving my memories except I was seeing them from His point of view and in that He revealed the purpose of why I had been through the things I did. At the end of that series, He told me ‘You are meant to be mobile’. At that point, that was an idea I could really get on board with. All I had brought to Kauai with me was two suitcases and I really started to like the feeling of not having so much stuff weighing me down. However, I had no idea that my life would lead to spending an entire year living out of two backpacks. I did know that I liked the idea of not having to carry around so much weight.

The second vision was of all the times I had ever felt called to missions. I had felt the call many times but I just thought it was church guilt and never actually went. I gave in to the voices of fear and doubt way too many times and stayed back in my comfort zone up until this last year when I finally said yes! At the end of that vision, He told me I was going to travel the world and teach about the heart posture of worship. Ha, um what? Sounds great, God, but you are going to have to teach ME what that means before I can do that… So He did.

At the time, I thought both of these visions were too crazy to be true. God doesn’t talk to us like that anymore, does He? I thought that was only in the Bible times. 

Well news flash, just because we became more industrialized, commercialized, and distractified (yes I made that word up), doesn’t mean God speaks to us any less than He did in the bible times, we just learned how to tune Him out. Well turn up your hearing aids Irma, ‘cause the Lord is speakin’! 

God is not only faithful to promise, but faithful to fulfill those promises! I thought I had to do it on my own. Okay, if God wants me to travel the world then I better go! Why wait any longer?! 

I immediately started looking at flights to Peru and was just going to leave from Kauai. I had no idea what I was going to find but I heard God say go, so I was going. Luckily God is also smarter than me and shortly after told me about the beauty in the process and that it was going to take some time before that promise came true. I really don’t like waiting for things so I was a little disappointed by this, but nevertheless I knew I needed to go back to California for awhile. I still had a lot of growing to do. 

Over the next 3 years I ended up volunteering at my local church. I started off on the tech team learning all about the behind the scenes of church services and worship. I learned about how to worship to an audience of one, and how to connect my heart when no one was watching. When all eyes are on the front of the stage (or closed) there is a lot of freedom in the back of the church for someone who was struggling with so much fear of man. I learned how to freely worship in that season.

I then became an intern for this church and started leading worship for kids. This involves a lot of dancing, choreographing, and some admin work. It also involves a ton of worship and building relationships with these amazing kids. I became a worship leader at a time I felt extremely unequipped and unqualified to do so. I had just come out of another unexpected dark season and I thought leading people was the last place I should be. But clearly God thought different and doors just started flying open almost faster than I could say yes. There was no denying He wanted me in that position, at that perfect timing.

Throughout the year I learned more about what worship was from those kids than I had learned my entire life growing up in the church. One day I asked the kids what worship is and one little girl raised her hand and said “Worship is connecting our heart to God’s heart”. YES and AMEN. Mic drop. 

Why is it that so many things are really that simple, yet we make them so complicated? Worship doesn’t even have to be music, yet that is the first thing most people think of when they hear about it. During that season, I learned so much what it looks like to invite God into every piece of your life, how to worship him in every moment, and then I was blessed enough to be able to teach children how to do the same thing.

God first pulled me out of the darkness. He then told me my purpose, and has been fulfilling those promises ever since. He has taught me about what the heart of worship is (which I will forever be learning), and then sent me around the world to not only teach about it but learn from all those I encounter. This didn’t just start with a rescue, but with a seed God planted long ago. When I was in high school I told my parents I wanted to travel the world and see how other people worshipped God. I had grown up in the same very white American church and I knew that God was so much bigger than that and I wanted to find him. I had been taught how to believe in God one specific way but there was something in my spirit that said there was more out there and I just had to find out what it was. 

I have now spent the last 5 months traveling the world. I have experienced so many different types of people, culture, foods, hearts, love, and worship. I have seen all new sides of God’s face embodied in his people that I never knew existed. I have learned so much from those I encounter everyday and I am not even half way done with my race. I have fallen in love with God in a way I had never experienced before because I am getting to know Him at levels I didn’t think possible. I see Him in his people everywhere and I have this crazy love for them that can only be explained by God. There is a huge part of my heart filled with Africa, and now another huge part filled with Asia. I am getting to teach about the relationship and power of worship all around the world, to every nation, every tongue, and every age. My mind is CONSTANTLY BLOWN by the blessing I get to live out every day. I don’t know why God picked me for this other than the fact that He loves me and I said yes. I learned to stop asking the question why and spend more time just taking it all in. I may never get to know why, but wow, I can definitely spend my time in thanksgiving. 

I have watched so many people of every background step into their authority as children of God and start to understand the power of their voice, the power of their prayers, and the power of their worship. In the process, God has taught ME so much about the same things. Most of those people didn’t even speak English. Luckily the Holy Spirit doesn’t need me to be multi-lingual in order to move. 

I still don’t know how I made it here. But I am more and more grateful everyday. I am grateful for the hard things even more so because it causes me to just sit in the presence of Jesus and let Him take care of me. Sometimes it’s nice to be taken care of for a change. I don’t think I can ever fathom why He loves us so much when we don’t deserve it. So I decided I am just going to learn how to sit in his love instead of trying to figure it out.

 I am not the savior (shocker), so I am going to just let Him do his job.

 He’s pretty dang good at it. 

*I am still in need of $5,800 more dollars to stay on the race and continue spreading the kingdom! Please consider donating, anything helps! Thank you so much for all the support. I am blown away by how much support and love I have received so far! I love you all 🙂