Crossing a Threshold
Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash
“You’re crossing over a threshold. ”
When she said it with her New Zealand accent, her words carried an authority with them that made me stand up straighter. I had asked for prayer, but what Tarn Cross had given me was a vision that would deeply shape my life.
As she leaned toward me to be heard over the praise band, her dark auburn hair provided a shield from the gaze of the room as she spoke these words, “ Like Peter, Jesus has asked you to step out of the boat. You are crossing a threshold into new territory where you will trail blaze a way forward.”
I knew then that she was right. God had been asking me to trust him in launching out on my own for months. But these words from a year ago burned like warm embers in my chest. They still spark within me when I consider what I am about to do. What I am doing.
Stepping Out of the Boat
It is an extraordinarily vulnerable thing to cross a threshold. We have to let go of what was, but we are not sure yet what will be. The sting of loss is still with us, and the way through is unfamiliar and unsteady.
Our footing may not be as sure as it once was. But regardless, we must trust the voice on the water that says, “Come.” Come out on to the water. Come out onto the waves.
And what can we do but try? Perhaps we will sink, but also - perhaps we will do something supernatural. Perhaps we will walk on water.
I knew that God was calling me into a season where I would need to take a risk. He called me to launch a ministry (Awakening the Soul) where I would create, write, speak, and make spaces that would awaken the souls of ministry leaders. But stepping out of the boat is a lot more inspiring at a distance. When the wind isn’t sending waves crashing in our direction. It takes on a whole new form when we have to live it. When we, like Peter, like me, begin to sink.
In the week I left InterVarsity, a ministry I had been serving with for 18 years - 11 as staff, to start this ministry, the ground began to shift beneath my feet. I had stepped out of the boat, and I could sense the waves threatening to pull me under.
Tad J. Blackburn calls this, “the messy middle” of transition. He names how chaotic things get during these times,
“We experience an intensification of stress. Problems are exaggerated. Behavior is exaggerated. Emotions are exaggerated. We experience loneliness, anxiousness, grief, and profound disappointments.”
And…I experienced all these things at once.
Side note: sometimes we need a little guidance spiritually when they are in these chaotic times.
If you would like a little help encountering God, let me encourage you with this guided meditation (Visio Divina) on one of my paintings, “Home.”
I listened to this on my trip when I needed to be reminded of God’s protective presence where I felt vulnerable and even though it was my voice leading it, God still met me profoundly. Get it in your inbox here:
Submerging into Chaos
Not only did the waves of grief hit me from what I was leaving behind a ministry that profoundly shaped me most of my life, but the transition was rocky and abrupt. Then, several opportunities I had been counting on to launch and sustain the ministry fell through in the same week.
This began to trigger past wounds. I started spiraling in disorientation, grief, and anger. I didn’t know which way was up - or forward, and I started to submerge into an inner chaos like the raging sea.
I lost sight of the horizon, and more importantly, I lost sight of Jesus. I couldn’t see Jesus because I was drowning in grief over what I was losing. Relationships. Stability. Organizational identity. A clear view of the future. As these things started slipping away, I tried to grab a hold of something - anything to buoy me up. The problem was - the more I tried to hold on to control, the deeper I began to sink.
It struck me later that perhaps this unsettling feeling; the fear, the sinking and submerging into the chaos of the sea is part of what it means to walk on water. To go where our feet have not yet gone. And to do something supernatural.
Learning to walk on water requires the risk of sinking. And likely, we will. But, we must come face to face with our helplessness in the face of our fears. Like everything else - we risk failing when we try something new.
When Jesus called me onto the water, he knew I would sink. But maybe he wanted me to know my helplessness too. Firsthand. To experience a level of desperation where I would know for sure - only he could save me from drowning.
A Word of Promise
Shortly after my transition out of InterVarsity, I took a timely trip with my husband to Canada. We didn’t know then how much I would need to get away, how much I would need to right size everything with the distance from home.
How much I would need space to grieve and process - not only the loss of leaving an organization that has shaped me the majority of my life, but the resistance I would encounter in trying something new.
As we made our way across the Canadian border, I was still spiraling emotionally, grieving with my husband all the ways I felt small and if I’m honest, expressing my anger and rage as well. My husband Steven just calmly listened and held space in the car for the tornado of emotions that were swirling around and bouncing off windows.
We chased storm clouds in front of us the entire way downstate and crossed the Canadian border just as the sun was setting behind us. As we passed through the rain, the storm passed over us and there it was - the end of the rainbow resting on the road in front of us.
We saw this same rainbow for several minutes until the sun set. The next day, on the way to our next destination, we saw another one. And another. I think in the first few days of our trip we saw 7 rainbows. I have never seen so many rainbows in my life. I sensed God was trying to get my attention.
A rainbow is a symbol of crossing a threshold. A space between heaven and earth. A bridge between the storm of the past and the path before us.
The Revelation of Rainbows
When a rainbow appears, light creates a prism through the water droplets still present from the storm. They are like a portal - revealing what was hidden in the light that only the storm could illuminate. God was calling me to see something in that threshold space I could not see in the midst of drowning in the sea. As John O’Donohue puts it, “every rainbow is a revelation.”
So what was God illuminating in the storm with his light? I sensed him say,
“Beloved, it’s ok that this start feels a little rocky, a little wobbly. It takes time to learn how to walk on water when all you have learned is how to stand in a boat - but more than anything it takes faith. It takes belief in the one who is calling you out onto the waves. And it takes an assurance of my love that I won't let you fall. You are learning how much you were dependent on the approval of others and your organizational identity.
But - the only way to stand on the waves is to stand on my love. You cannot stand on your own accomplishments. You cannot stand on the thoughts or opinions of others. They will not hold you. You must stand on my love alone. Trust that it will lift you up.
Standing on the Waves
God was inviting me to release everything to which I had been clinging too tightly; my need for approval, my striving for control, my striving for success. We cannot walk on water while holding onto these things.
When all we have known is the boat that used to hold us up in the storm, it takes practice to stand on God’s love and faithfulness. It takes a new level of faith to believe His promise. His ability to save. And that might feel totally unfamiliar to us.
But while stepping out of the boat may be frightening, there is beauty there too. Because threshold moments are always latent with the possibility of birthing something new. They are spaces of invitation.
“No threshold need be a threat, but rather an invitation to a promise”
A threshold is a welcome opportunity for the Spirit of God to hover over the chaos within us and say, “let there be light,” and illuminate the storm with a word of promise.
Wasn’t the chaos the very birthplace of creation in the beginning? In day 1, when the Spirit of God hovered over it and spoke, what happened then? Creation was formed.
When God spoke, “let there be light,” I’ll bet a rainbow appeared that day; a colorful pathway where creation would unfurl under his very words.
Maybe like me, you are in a threshold right now too. At the very least, you sense that our world is in the midst of one. We are on the edge of a storm that has just passed. The sun is setting on an era behind us that will never be again. And it is a critical moment where we must decide who will become, and where we will ultimately place our trust.
Will we allow the light to transpose through the storm to see the beauty and color hidden within it all along? Would we lean in and see the path before us alive with his promise and latent with possibility for new creation?
Maybe something within you is stirring inside and telling you it is time. Let me encourage you to take the risk. You may fall, but also - you may just walk on water.
“Take your time; feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.”
