Free fall

Yesterday morning Matt asked me a simple question:

Remember that dream you had a few years ago about the cliff?...have we jumped yet?

I can't remember when it was - I think perhaps the fall of 2011? - I had a very vivid dream about being on a very high cliff - sort of a promontory - with Matt in the dense fog. I knew that God was waiting to ask us to jump, but in my dream it was also very clear that he was going to tell Matt, not me, not only the when, but also the where - which side of this cliff do we jump off of? Also directly clear was that although the fog kept us from seeing where any of the "wheres" would lead us, or how far the jump was going to be, we could be confident that the one who told us to jump would be there to catch us as we fell.


I don't doubt that we've jumped. :) And in more directions that I had thought possible when I first had the vision of the peninsular cliff! Here I'd thought we'd be shown one, not many all at once! :)

And while in many ways it feels like we're free-falling right now - still no idea when we'll feel solid ground beneath us! - Matt's simple light-hearted reminder of this vision from the past has been such an encouragement to me that although this feels like free fall, we are free-falling under the explicit direction of the One who promises to be with us - the One from whom we can expect no less than more than we can handle and it has been so good to re-set my focus on this. The challenges and disappointments and uncertainties that life offers us are each opportunities to "set our minds on things above and not things of the earth." *

My sister, who happens to be an onamastic** expert, gave us this more in-depth analysis of Evania's name. While "peaceful" is a reasonably simple meaning of "Evania," her research revealed this meaning from the Greek: taking trouble lightly. What a beautiful picture - the trouble of this life is not diminished, but the impact that trouble has on our day to day well-being is diminished. With this perspective, it becomes easier to say,

Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. ***


*Colossians 3:2
**In fact, the only reason that the word "onamastic" is in my vocabulary is because my sister is one!
***Romans 5:3-5