For the last year, I have lost my voice. Not my physical voice, but my creative voice. The last year was full of new experiences, but I was powerless to share their impact, their meaning. I was powerless to see why they mattered, why they might be happening to me, what they were growing in me. I only saw that most days, it all seemed impossibly difficult. Somehow, grace by grace, I survived. I clung to Jesus more than I ever have before. I still don’t know what every fruit of the last year will be, but maybe that’s what my creative voice should’ve proclaimed all along: I don’t know.

I don’t know what the future holds or why I left missions—just that it was time.

I don’t know  what my plans or my dreams for my life are any more—Jesus dismantled them brick by brick, but I am confident he is building something new, something better than I would’ve built by myself.

I don’t know where I’m going or what I want, but I know what I don’t want, and that is more than half the battle.

As unsatisfying as it feels to constantly admit I don’t know, and as much as I really, truly do look forward to the day when I finally know, for now, this is the season that I am in. I’ve been in it for a long time, but now I finally see the joy in not knowing. I see the thousands of opportunities for adventure in finding out what I don’t know. And now, after months and months of what was, for me, real and true suffering, I don’t know is no longer something for me to run from but something to engage with.

No, I don’t know. But I finally recognize myself in spite of not knowing, and that makes all the difference.