The More I know the More I know that I Don’t Know.

I thought I had it all planned out.  But the more I live the more I know the more I know that I don’t know.

I recently graduated from the school of Dance with YWAM, traveling to Croatia and Italy with a group of girls so beautiful in spirit that now I can only remember as if it were all a dream.  Now, I’ve change the course of my life completely.

Well, not quite.

After going and helping choreograph a show to take to China (which was incredible by the way, email me at ericapisarchuk@gmail.com if you want details and pictures) I find myself in Seattle, trying to readjust to a new world, a new culture, a new apartment, and new friends so unlike the world of YWAM.  I still haven’t been able to find a job but I’m praying the best one will arise eventually.

Some might ask me why I’m suddenly deciding to attend college now after deciding I was just going to be a missionary. The answer is simple.  I’m still a missionary.  We all are.  In fact I think I have been less of a missionary because I have not been living so much in the real world, but have instead been what one might describe as being “in training.”  God was preparing me.  I applaud those people who live their lives in the throngs of the world everyday, learning to love and serve every person regardless who they are, without prizes or recognition of their self-sacrifice for the sake of Christ.

Now, where I live is no easy place.  Downtown Seattle, “gay-central” and where the druggies hang out is constantly keeping me on my toes.  (Figuratively and literally.)  But I am a mishap just as they are.  The only difference is, I’ve found life.

I am going to this arts college not for the reason that the rest of these other young students are going.  I’m going because God told me to be fully alive and dance is part of what helps me live fully alive.  It connects me with people in ways deeper than anything else.  I’m learning to hone my art as the craftsmen did in the Old Testament.  And whatever my hands find to do I do it with all my might.

It’s not everyday that a missionary would seek to use dance to glorify God and reach people, and it’s another story entirely that she would gain the expertise at a secular college in one of the most liberal schools in the country, but one of the best art schools as well.

This is God beginning to close the gap between sacred and secular.

There should never have been a secular and a sacred.

It has been and always will be, humanity.  God didn’t go anywhere.

God told us to be in the world.  How can I do that if I isolate myself with other Christians?  That’s not loving.  That’s choosing comfort and ease.  Stability.  Control.  I don’t want to control my life.  I want God to do that.  He’s much better at it than I am.

It’s not an inexpensive college by any means, and it will take a miracle for me to finish all four years without seriously going into debt.  But I know that God God has a plan either way – and whether I end up graduating here or somewhere less prestigious, or having to endlessly work to pay for it,  I know that God will fulfill His purpose and be glorified by my life regardless.  Wherever I am.  In the grand scheme of things, will I look back at my life and see that I bound myself to it, or that I was free?  Free to do something , or free not to.  It’s a beautiful revelation that still plays out in my life everyday and I don’t quite yet fully understand it.  But it eases the sin of worry like breathing revives the body after being suppressed by gallons of heavy, dark water.  The point is to live fully.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Annie is a little “fireball” who was in my school of dance, and she has the same visions that I had for redeeming art back to God, except she is called to do it in Seattle and The Vision is getting bigger and bigger.  God is divinely bringing together so many of the Christian artists in the city of Seattle and rising up the young people on fire for God to bring life back into it.  I’ve found that the calling that I’ve had for over three years is the same as Annie’s and the same as so many other artists that I have met through YWAM and in artists that are moving to Seattle at this specifically pivotal time.

It sends chills down my spine when I think about what God’s going to do in the next five years and I can’t wait to be apart of it.

To create without restraints of religion.  To be inspired by real humanity and then having an answer for it’s pain.

To tell the Truth in a way that people will listen.

To do what I was created to do. Reflect God with my life.

Going to this college has not been easy so far, but it has made me to go back to God for help everyday.  He’s given me strength.  He’s given me money where I needed it.  He’s given me free furniture where I was living on a hard floor.  He’s given me friends in Seattle that have helped me and He’s given me a cheap apartment right next to my college and a roommate that I feel like I’ve known most of my life.  I know I’m in the right place and I have peace that it will all work out.  As Jeridan, an amazing friend of mine would say, “God’s got you covered.”  It’ll work out.

To what end I don’t know.

But that’s not wisdom that I need to know just yet.  I know God has an incredible plan in mind, as slowly, the artists of this city join together and take it back for God and with art that, instead of following culture, leads it, like it should.

Artists are often the prophets of society, leading culture.

Sometimes I feel as if I’ve lost the passion for dancing by focusing so much on the technique of it in school and it drains me.  But I can remember an important thing that Randall Flynn told us on the School of Dance in YWAM:

“We perfect our technique so that our bodies will not get in the way of what our souls want to express.”

This is why I am studying dance in an arts college.  So that wherever I go as a dancer, God can use me more effortlessly for His purposes as a choreographer and a dancer, in worship, in performance, in creativity, in communication, in prayer, and even in pure entertainment for the sake of bringing someone joy or even just setting them free from bondage and to heal them and deliver them.  Yes, God can use dance as a tool for even that.  I’ve seen it happen.

Ultimately I will always be a “missionary”  wherever I go.  It’s called living life to the fullest.

If it weren’t I couldn’t call myself a follower of Jesus Christ in the first place.