Mountaintop

The new year always makes me reminisce of moving to the Dominican.  4 years ago this year, my world started to flip upside down.  I had applied to this school in the DR and they ended up hiring me, when I really thought God was just "testing" my heart.  After they hired me, I spent the next five weeks preparing to leave quickly.  My brother told me about this song for Martin Luther King, Jr called Up to the Mountain by Patty Griffin.  I became obsessed with it.  I would play it in my house and car on repeat.  I would cry over and over again to it in surrender to God's will for me to move to the DR.  One story of the Bible, I've mentioned before, was about Abraham being asked to take his son to be sacrificed on the mountain top.  I would hear God tell me to, "Go, Phyllis.  Just go. You do not know what I have for you, but you just go."  Like Abraham, I had no idea what God was going to do.  I wasn't laying a child down to die, but laying myself down to be sacrificed.  A giant rubberband.  God would show me how I wanted His will but also wanted my own desires...but they didn't fit the plan...So I would cry.  A sweet humbled cry of wanting to go where He said, but also scared that I do not know what lies ahead...and doing it alone.  Go to a place where you know no one and you have never been. 

Go. 

So, this song was perfect. 

"I went up to the mountain
Because you asked me to (**these first words would always make a tear seep out)
Up over the clouds
To where the sky was blue

I could see all around me
Everywhere

Sometimes I feel like
I never been nothing but tired (I am not sure I slept at all in these weeks)
And I'll be working
'Til the day I expire

Sometimes I lay down
No more can I do (I was so exhausted and felt like death)
But then I go on again
Because you asked me to

Some days I look down
Afraid I will fall (because following God requires faith and crazy things are going to happen)
And though the sun shines
I see nothing at all

Then I hear your sweet voice <3
Come and then go
Come and then go
Telling me softly
You love me so :)

The peaceful valley
Just over the mountain
The peaceful valley
Few come to know

I may never get there
Ever in this lifetime
But sooner or later
It's there I will go
Sooner or later
It's there I will go"

 

I am listening to it tonight on repeat.  January/February 2012 is just flooding my brain.  Seeing God work miracles to move me here.  But it has never stopped since the day I touched down on this island.  I see Him move in mighty ways and use me for things I could never imagine or do.  Why?  Because I lay down myself as a sacrifice for whatever He wants.  I want it no other way, even though earlier today I shed tears over the promise of a husband He gave me a while back early one morning on my porch.  Clear as day, I remember exactly what the Lord said about him.  But, I have yet to see the promise come to pass.  Tonight, I am in one of those mountaintop moods.  I will keep walking until I get out of this valley.  When I think I heard wrong, I think back to that morning where it was clear as day and remind myself if the Lord said it, He will do it.  I need only be still, yet go...

 

In case you haven't seen on FB, we are building a safe house for victims of human trafficking.  4 years later and the land is purchased.  The reason for my "mountaintop move" is here.  Crazy.  Isn't it?  When I go out to the property, I cant help but pray and just say, "Thank You, Lord. Thank You that I get to be a part of this plan."  

Get moving to your mountain.  You will die, but you have to...in order to live.

 

www.fightministries.org to donate to the cause.

Listen to the song