It’s been 10 days since we hit Bali. I can’t believe how time is passing. I can’t believe the turbo speed.
There are many updates to share, many heart lines made, many memories with Jesus made and many memories with my squad made. It’s a lot. I often don’t have wifi and half the time I don’t have energy to write or marco or text. Some days it’s because my heart is heavy and some days it’s because I’m so engulfed in the love in front of me, I can’t make space.
But today, where you are, it’s Valentine’s Day and I’m reflective because I had so many wonderful Valentine’s Day surprises yesterday.
And you know what? Not a single one had to do with the obvious.
As Jesus works to redeem so much of my past and my life, I know he wants to take back this day too. I know he wants to show me how I should be cared for and looked at and treated and seen. He wants to surprise me and delight me and show me what a real man does for a real woman on Valentine’s day and what loving each other can look like when we take off our worldly glasses and rest in the beauty of how God created us to roam and commune with him.
A Valentine from Jesus Himself:
As I write now, my team has prayed, asked the Lord and we feel led to move to Nusa Penida. It’s an island off the coast of Bali towards the east with some of the most beautiful beaches you’ve seen and a vantage point that looks out over a small series of land masses that look like a T Rex head. Cool.
I know there is a lot of curiosity about how we get to this point so I’ll try to explain it the best I can. Our team prayed and got a series of images and things. The first time we prayed we felt led to Sumatra. What that means is that the images and words that we all got as we prayed led in that direction. For example, one teammate got the word Sumatra, I got northwest, and another person got an image of a mountaintop looking out over the ocean. We continued to pray into it and felt pretty good about Sumatra.
Then, we sat down with our budget and the numbers weren’t lining up to get us there. Like, no way.
I’m not going to lie, we felt discouraged and a little confused. Like what Lord?
Our team is really chill. Really kind, listening and collaborative. We agreed to give it some space, pray into it and see what happens. We prayed and people got the color red, the word Pan Am and the direction to go prayer walk and see what the Lord wanted to show us. At this point about half of our team needed some space and the other half decided to walk. I was on the walk team. It was me, Andrea, and Alayna – all the gals. We prayed and asked God to give us someone who would help us see where we needed to travel to for the rest of the month.
We felt led (nudged by the spirit) to take a right out of our hostel, a direction I hadn’t taken before. We made it to the end of the road and saw a sign for Pan Am. Ok, there’s one Lord. We looked to our right and a huge storm cloud was brewing. Eerie. God knows I’m not a fan of storms. I heard him say to me, “Are you going to walk towards what scares you or what?” touché.
As we made the right, we were in the middle of a bunch of rice fields. We were probably walking for about 10 minutes with a huge storm in front of us and really no sign of anyone to talk with or interact with. But as we were walking Andrea pointed out the red flags all over the fields. Ok Lord. We see you.
We began to come up on what looked like some little huts/houses. I stopped, feeling the urge to walk down an ally that honestly looked like someone’s driveway. I stood for a couple of seconds and noticed Alayna had stopped behind me too. We looked at each other and knew the Lord wanted us to walk down the ally. Andrea followed.
We came up on a woodworking shop on our right and we could hear the buzz of a saw and a bunch of lumber and tables but no one was to be found. Hmmm. After a couple minutes of sort of roaming around a man came out. Yanto. The owner of the business.
Turns out he is a contractor and owns the warehouse we were standing in. Friendly, excited, kind and ready to chat we held his attention for about an hour. We talked about a lot of things but the best part is that about 10 minutes into us talking, he told us exactly where we should go. Without fail, Nusa Penida. The island that looks like a dinosaur with a hilltop overlook. Flex. Lord. There’s the hilltop again.
I had singled out this island at the beginning of our trip and any time we had free time, I was trying to get us there. There is a beach called Diamond Beach that is supposed to be incredibly beautiful. It just wasn’t working out so I had said “It’s ok Lord, I trust you to show me beauty all year.” And what does the Lord do? He says, “Happy Valentine’s Day Linds. Let’s go. “
Squad Valentines
Our squad is big on honoring men as men and women as women. Hear me when I say this is about squashing stereotypes and healing wounds that we all have about the other gender. We are firm on looking at each other as brothers and sisters in Christ and really loving each other. On the morning of Valentine’s Day, all the girls got together to buy croissants for our guys and write them encouraging notes. We numbered the notes, prayed over them and each girl wrote a word or phrase on the notes. We prayed that the ones each individual guy would pick up would have the words for him. We surprised them that morning with their breakfast, a line of hugs and their notes. It was pretty awesome to get to do that for them.
Mid morning, Mary Grace hit us all with sloth notes and suckers for all the girls. Turns out the little light stayed up till like 4 writing them. She wanted us all to know how much we are loved.
Later, we received notes from our team lead and a valentine from our coaches.
That night, the guys got in on the Valentine’s day festivities in a big way. They were so cute and excited. They planned a whole evening for us. They made us an ice cream bar, performed a song for us, made a homemade face mask for us and washed our feet. Even as I write this I have the urge to stick my tongue out because it sounds so darn cliché, right? But, who cares? It looked like Christ and it looked like caring for women in the way they need to be cared for sometimes. They also wrote us notes specific to us and our hearts with words of encouragement. It was precious.
We all ended the night with a pool party complete with dancing, games and chicken fights. I’ve been staying up later these days and I just partied my little heart out in the most wholesome way I can think of.
I think it’s my favorite Valentine’s day I’ve had.
