Since our trip to Atlanta in August, I have been feeling…adrift. Rudderless is the term that I’ve been using in my prayer closet.
Before going to Atlanta, I was carrying what I call, a holy burden of prayer, for those that were coming “after” us into entrepreneurialism. Since the beginning of the year, the Lord has been putting this burden on my heart, to pray for them, that they would find the help that they needed, that they would be able to come home from the work place quickly – many, many things. In addition to the needs, when I would pray for them, I was seeing a large wave heading toward shore. I just “knew” that this meant there was a new wave of enterpreneurs coming.
In Atlanta, after quite a drought, I understand, the weekend we were there, it rained. I mean, it R.A.I.N.E.D. At one point during the sessions, the Holy Spirit wooed me into the hallway to pray. As I walked out of the meeting room, the view that met me was wind and rain that I would consider to be similar to a hurricane. It was literally bending the trees in half and the rain was shaking the floor with the intensity with which it was being blown against the glass. (I did say rained, right??) 
As I stood in the hall praying, the “wave” that I had been seeing became HUGE – tsunami big – and the burden to pray increased exponentially. I thought it had to do with the people in the session that was taking place at that moment. I thought that it meant that there were more people inside that were being called to find their way home from work. (The Lord impressed upon my heart a day or so later that it wasn’t that the numbers were increasing, but that they were getting closer. “Not larger…but closer…nearer” was the specific thing I heard in my prayer closet.)
Since then, the wave has disappeared and now when I pray, I see a line of refugees. They are lined up with tents and many children, all along a dusty road. I do not know what this means, I simply know that my heart aches for them.
This morning, in my prayer closet, I was crying out to Father, asking how we can serve these “refugees” when we are so weak, ourselves. Asking that He would give me a vision as to what He would have us to for these precious people.
This whole entrepreneurial process has been very difficult. We have spent much time feeling like human hamburger (or mince beef – nods to Philoxenos) 
as the Lord has done a deep work in our hearts, minds and relationships. At every turn, this has been hard. Good, but hard.
Just as suddenly as I asked, I saw a scene from “The Princess Bride” flit through my head, and I heard Buttercup say, “We’ll never succeed. We may as well die here.” and Westley respond, “No, no. We have already succeeded. I mean, what are the three terrors of the Fire Swamp? One, the flame spurt – no problem. There’s a popping sound preceding each; we can avoid that. Two, the lightning sand, which you were clever enough to discover what that looks like, so in the future we can avoid that too.”
And I GOT IT! It has had to be hard so that we COULD help those coming behind us. I’ve had a small grasp of that, but now I know it deep in myself. We have done SO many stupid things, that just like Buttercup, I have been “clever enough” to find the “terrors” of the maze of beginning enterpreneurship, so that we may help anyone coming behind us. (Sorry – that’s referred to as one of the “s” words at my house. Shut up is the other. However, this is the only word I could find to adequately express my heart.)
There is likely very little that anyone else can do that is worse than anything we’ve done – and yet the Lord has sustained us and grown us and rescued us and grown us and ministered to us and grown us and held our hands and grown us and continues to love us despite ourselves.
So, it’s official. All these years I’ve been waiting for the moment and now I can declare: I’m clever enough.
