Uncertain, yes. Scary? No.

It has been a minute, blog friends. I won’t offer any excuses, but will instead jump into the topic at hand. It’s one of my least favorite words: uncertainty.

If you’ve known me for a minute, you know I love precision, predictability, faithfulness, people who do what they say they’re going to do, show up on time, in other words: certainty.

I’m sure there are many reasons for this. We could delve into all of them, but I might just make the case simple: isn’t certainty easier? Even if it’s the worse case scenario, isn’t it better to know? Then you can plan around it.

I’m in a pretty long, lingering season of uncertainty. I’d very much like it to be over.

But this uncertainty has held some gifts that I wouldn’t have known to ask for.

Allow me two stories to explain.

First, it’s January of 2023. I was on a work trip to the Philippines.

(these pictures don’t have anything to do with the plot of this story, but it was such a beautiful place, I wanted to share)

I was part of a team looking for ways to serve alongside an incredible group of people working to end the online exploitation of children throughout the Philippines. I met some of the brightest and best people I’ve ever met in my whole life there in Manila.

On the last day, we were driven across the city again to meet with a large group of faith-based believers. We unload out of the van and are waiting in the parking lot while they check our credentials.

As I’m standing there, I notice two nuns to my right. Being…Julie…I decide to start chatting with them, and find out that they are from Sri Lanka.

I immediately burst into a big grin and ask if they primarily speak Tamil or Singhalese (the two main languages in Sri Lanka). One matches the enormity of my grin back as she says she speaks Tamil, which “happens” to be the one of the two I speak more of. What a joy.

It’s weeks later that I get an email from her. She went on to tell me how that was her first morning in Manila. She had retired from teaching school in Sri Lanka and moved to the Philippines as a nun several years earlier. Prior to that morning, she had been teaching in a more rural area of the country and had just moved to Manila for her next assignment.

She told me how refreshing it had been to have a taste of home on her first morning in a big city.

Only God.

The second story starts a few weeks after I get back from the Philippines.

I had done my initial day of kidney testing a few weeks before this work trip, and upon my return, the steps continued. For a while there, it seemed like there was a new layer of cost each week. Another blood draw, another set of potential complications to consider until a few weeks before the surgery when I was reading through another set of paperwork. This one specifically enumerated the risks to women who haven’t yet had children.

It was the first time in my life I realized I was making a decision that moved me a step away from being a mother some day. I cried a lot that day. I am fully aware that Jesus can do anything. That also doesn’t mean that Jesus will do anything. And living in the tension between those two statements requires a lot of faith, doesn’t it?

So what do these two stories have to do with each other?

There’s part of me (okay, it’s the majority) that feels like I’d be able to handle life better if I just knew everything that was coming. Just let me know when to brace, and I can handle the rest.

But then I look back at last year. If I had known all of what giving my kidney away would cost me, I actually would have been more afraid, not less. I still would have done it (with joy), but it would have been much more difficult. It was actually the kindness of God to spare me the details, and instead give them to me bit by bit.

Which is why I feel like I “should” be handling this current season of uncertainty better. (See my previous blog on “shoulding” yourself.)

For some reason, it just feels like this one is on my shoulders somehow. Like it’s up to me to sort it out. But it’s not.

I think what is really true is this: it’s uncertain for sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s scary.

And I think what I learned from my Sri Lankan nun friend in the Philippines is that if I’m going to put myself on the hook for sorting this out, then I have to also take credit for all the unexplained miracles of my life.

Allow me to explain.

It means that somehow (please catch the sarcasm) it was me who orchestrated all the details of that trip to Sri Lanka 12 years ago…was smart enough to choose a children’s home on the east coast of the island where they mostly speak Tamil…then years later took a job that would pioneer into this new partnership in order to be in that exact spot on that exact moment so a faithful sister would know she was seen by God…

Except that takes her miracle away too, doesn’t it? Was she seen by God? Or did I finagle the whole deal?

Or it was me that somehow gave myself the exact right blood type and a perfectly matched kidney for my dear friend Mike.

It starts to sound ludicrous, doesn’t it?

And isn’t it a much better story if my friend was seen by God? If my other friend’s life was saved by God? Who thought of kidneys and gave me two?

It seems like I have to decide afresh that Jesus is in charge…or I’m on the hook. I don’t think I can have it both ways.

So perhaps this uncertainty isn’t on me either. Maybe it’s just still unfolding. And I’m still the same me. The very small, along for the ride, not able to control nearly as much as I’d like to think I can, dearly, dearly loved by Jesus…me.

I think that’s better news than (sigh)…certainty.

Or maybe it’s a better form of certainty: that I don’t know what this year will hold. I don’t know for certain where I’ll be working or living come August….but I know my Friend Jesus will be there. Orchestrating hilariously beautiful miracles I’d never be smart enough to put together and holding the pieces of my messy life together like He always has.

It’s uncertain.

But that doesn’t mean it’s scary.