Brave Surrender Read online

  I met with Banning, who had walked beside me through every step of the entire painful process, to talk about how to handle these scenarios. I told him it felt like I couldn’t fully get away from everything that had happened, and I was still having awkward interactions and conversations with people that made me sad and uncomfortable. After expressing how proud he was of me for the choices I had made and how far I had come, he gently pointed out, once again, part of my struggle in these situations seemed to come from that old desire to please people.

  When he said it, I felt angry and frustrated—not at him, but at myself. I knew he was right. I could feel that people-pleasing thing in me rearing its ugly head, and I knew it needed to be obliterated from my life. If it didn’t, it would control my life and could take me out.

  I drove home from meeting with Banning with hot tears streaming down my face and my cheeks flushed with anger. And once again, I felt that familiar voice of God inside me ask, Do you trust Me?

  By this point in our relationship, I knew that whenever He asked me this question, He was reminding me of the truth of what it means to live a life surrendered to Him. It is a life of constant stretching and growing. In His kindness and goodness, He refuses to leave us in our broken condition and wants to lead us into breakthrough and freedom in every aspect of our lives. In the twelve years since I had fully given my heart to Him, there was never a time when I wasn’t growing and learning, stretching and crying, trying and failing, overcoming and achieving. I had long since decided that anyone who says that they are “there” and have “figured it all out” must be crazy and not living in surrender to Jesus. Being grown and stretched was all I knew life with Jesus to be!

  It had been two years since we had moved back from San Francisco. This entire process had been long, and I could feel my frustration that it wasn’t over yet. At this point, I was leading worship all around the world, recording multiple albums, and teaching—yet I was still a work in progress, and it was clear by the fact that I was circling this mountain again, facing that old foe of people-pleasing, that Jesus was after more growth in my life.

  I searched my heart, looking for the answer to His question. Of course I trusted Jesus. Looking back at the previous twelve years, and even at my whole life, I could see His unwavering faithfulness to me. Was there something in my life where I did not trust Him?

  In the car, I began to talk out what I was feeling. “I can’t stand it that people are saying negative things about me. It means I can’t please them, which means I am failing. I want to defend myself. I want to set the record straight. And I didn’t see You coming to my defense and setting them straight.”

  There it was. Jesus wasn’t defending me—just like He hadn’t defended me with my stepdads. I still didn’t fully trust Jesus to be my Defender, because there was still a place in me, even after all the healing, that defaulted to the old lie that He had let me down as a child. I couldn’t believe I was going around this mountain yet again, but at least by now, I knew exactly what needed to be done, and I wasted no time doing it. I forgave my stepdads once more. I released them and blessed them. And I again forgave the people who had slandered me.

  I decided that if I was truly surrendered to Jesus, I could trust Him with my reputation. If He was my Defender, then I didn’t need to defend myself. I also decided that because I was living a life surrendered to Jesus and living in community with mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers around me, the fruit of my life would speak for itself. The fruit of a life surrendered to Jesus tells an even greater story than someone just trying to defend themselves.

  Chapter 10

  THE KNOCK-DOWN-DRAG-OUT WITH FEAR

  In December 2012, Skyler and I decided that, while we would remain committed to Jesus Culture, it was time to leave Redding. By this point, Jesus Culture had become a movement with a flourishing record label. Banning, Chris, and I were still working together, just as smoothly as we had for the last twelve years. Because we did conferences and events around the world and recorded music, realistically, Skyler and I could live anywhere and meet up with our team wherever we were doing ministry. We began to pray about where to go and what God would have us do.

  A month after this decision, I got a phone call from Banning. He had always wanted to plant a church, but he didn’t want to do it without being sent out and blessed by our pastors and church leadership at Bethel. He told me he met with the senior leader, Bill Johnson, who told him it was time and that he wanted to send us out to plant a church. I was stunned. My heart leaped at the idea that I would get to leave Redding with my Jesus Culture community and would get to start a church together! I felt in awe once again at the goodness of God. He was leading Skyler and me out, but we wouldn’t be going alone.

  Not alone, indeed. Only a few days after that phone call, I found out I was pregnant with our first child. There aren’t enough words to describe the whirlwind of emotions I felt. I was scared of becoming a mother, excited to be starting our family, and anxious about uprooting and moving in the middle of it all. Skyler and I spent a lot of time praying and thinking it over and ultimately made the tough decision to stay behind in Redding a little longer, until after our baby was born. It felt overwhelming to move and settle into a new city while pregnant. We had no idea what to expect with a pregnancy, let alone a new church plant, and didn’t want to create any added stress in our growing family.

  By February, the Bethel leaders publicly announced that Jesus Culture was being sent out to plant a church. In June, our entire team moved to Sacramento, California, and began to hold meetings with a group of about a hundred people who would form the core of the church. We wanted our internal world to be able to sustain the external world, so we began building our community culture with this group and setting up a foundational structure to sustain the church when we opened the doors to the public.

  Throughout my pregnancy, Skyler and I made the three-hour drive back and forth between Redding and Sacramento to be part of the core team meetings. In September, I gave birth to a little boy, whom we named Wyatt. I had Wyatt at my midwife’s house and had to work very hard to birth my baby boy. My entire face was swollen from pushing so hard for so long, and my eyes were nothing more than little slits on my face. As Skyler passed him to me, I just saw what looked to be a blurry baby with two heads coming at me.

  “What’s wrong with his head?” I shouted.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie,” my midwife said. “He was just really squished in there, and it’ll go back to normal in no time.”

  She was right. Within a few hours, Wyatt’s head was fine, and I found myself lost in a swirl of exhaustion, terror, joy, and out-of-my-mind love.

  A few weeks later, we put our house on the market and headed to Sacramento. Despite our efforts to lower the stress around this transition, it was still quite challenging because of how much I had on my plate. Of course, I was navigating the emotional roller coaster of learning to be a mom. I worried about every tiny thing with the baby and if I was “doing it right.” I spent countless hours crying, either because he was just so beautiful or because I was just so stressed.

  But even though I had just had a baby, we didn’t slow down! We took Wyatt to Russia when he was four months old. By the time he turned one, he had been in thirteen different countries and nineteen different states. In addition to traveling, leading worship, and working on various Jesus Culture albums, I was now president of Jesus Culture Music, our label, which was quite a lot of work. I loved running the business side of Jesus Culture, felt like I was learning a lot, and enjoyed working with numbers again—but adding that to my life made for a very full plate.

  Hitting the Wall

  When Wyatt was six months old, I found out to my shock that I was pregnant again. I took a couple of days to catch my breath and wrap my head around caring for a baby and being pregnant at the same time. Then I just put my head down and kept going. I was so overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to be a good mom in the midst of my crazy li
fe, and I didn’t even want to consider what on earth I would do with two children!

  Getting settled in Sacramento had been proving to be more difficult than we had anticipated. Thinking it wouldn’t take long for our house in Redding to sell, we signed a short-term lease on a rental when we first moved. However, the house didn’t sell before our lease ended, and we had to find another place to live. We ended up moving twice more before we finally accepted that we needed to settle into a longer-term rental.

  In the midst of all that, we suffered another setback in September 2014. Skyler, Wyatt, and I were on an extended trip to New Zealand when we received word from Skyler’s parents that they had stopped at our house in Redding to stay for a night, only to find that it had flooded. The next day Skyler got on the phone with our insurance company to discuss our flood coverage and learned that the flooding had caused an estimated thirty thousand dollars’ worth of damage.

  While he was on the phone, I received a panicked call from our realtor. She had been leading a team of cleaners over to our house to begin the process of cleaning up all the damage, only to come upon a roadblock. Apparently a huge forest fire was raging out of control and heading straight toward our house. Our neighborhood had already been evacuated, and there was no way she could get out there.

  I frantically relayed the information to Skyler, who began asking our insurance agent if we also had coverage for fire damage! Being all the way across the Pacific Ocean, the only thing we could do was pray.

  The next morning we got a phone call. Winds had suddenly appeared and pushed the fire back into an area that had previously been burned and was already evacuated, so no one was harmed. It was no longer a threat to any homes, and the firefighters were confident they could get it contained. Jesus had heard our prayers!

  Two days later Skyler went on an overnight ocean fishing trip with a local pastor. I stayed at the hotel with Wyatt, who had been fighting a fever. As a new mom (and one who was seven months pregnant!), I was so nervous and trying everything I could to help him feel better. The morning after Skyler left, I woke up to find Wyatt with a fever of 102 degrees. When I picked him up, he lay there limply, staring and unresponsive. Absolute panic kicked in. I called the pastor’s wife and asked her to take me to the hospital. They took us in right away and started giving Wyatt fluids and checking him out. I stood there, feeling helpless, scared, and convinced I must be a horrible mother to have a sick baby in a foreign country.

  This probably wouldn’t have even happened if you had stayed at home with your baby like other moms do. He probably caught something while he was on the airplane. You’re a bad mom. And you’re pregnant. Probably gonna be a bad mom to that kid too.

  To make matters worse, I couldn’t reach Skyler. Talk about stress.

  At last the doctor informed me that Wyatt had an infection and prescribed some antibiotics. Thankfully he started perking up by the time we made it out of the hospital. I, however, was nearing the end of myself.

  The truth was that my busyness had been my way of dealing with a fear that had been growing in me before and throughout this second pregnancy. Only a few weeks before I found out I was pregnant, a close friend lost her baby due to anencephaly. As I grieved with her and mourned the loss of her precious baby girl, the fear that something would go wrong with my child took root in my heart.

  I started having nightmares in which I would find myself standing over Wyatt’s crib, gripping his head with both hands and screaming. After finding out I was pregnant, the nightmares got worse. When I had an ultrasound done at five months, I told the technician I didn’t want to know the gender—I only wanted to know if my baby was alive and had a head that was completely intact. She looked at me in confusion and assured me my baby was totally healthy.

  Just two months before the ultrasound, when I was three months pregnant, I had gone on tour for my solo record Still Believe. One of our dates was in New York City, and we had sold out a theater in Times Square. I was so excited! But the morning of the concert, I woke up with excruciating pain and cramps. I could barely walk or move because the pain was so intense. Skyler got me to a hotel room so I could try to sleep it off, but I couldn’t sleep. I was certain I was experiencing a miscarriage and was losing the baby.

  Finally Skyler took me to the emergency room. They got me in right away and told me that an ultrasound technician was on the way to check on the baby. I changed into a hospital gown, got into the hospital bed, grabbed Skyler’s hand, and wept. My body was trembling with fear that my baby was dead. I was trying to prepare myself for the worst news, but I couldn’t hold myself together. After what felt like an eternity, the technician arrived and began the ultrasound. I held my breath.

  “There’s your little bean, and there is a perfect heartbeat!” he said.

  I let out my breath and sobbed.

  He continued. “Your baby is totally healthy, and there are no signs of a miscarriage.”

  Skyler and I cried tears of relief. They found I had an infection that was causing the pain and cramping, gave me a prescription, and sent me on my way. On the drive back to the venue, Skyler said it was only an hour until showtime and everyone was wondering if we should cancel. It seemed like the best idea, considering I could barely walk and was still in a tremendous amount of pain. But after hearing that my baby was okay, I was furious—at fear for convincing me I had lost my baby, at the enemy for filling my mind with lies, and at myself for listening to those lies and allowing terror to overwhelm me.

  “I’m going to make the enemy pay,” I told Skyler. “I am getting on that stage tonight. We are going to worship, and we are going to see people get set free tonight.”

  I understood that the enemy would love nothing more than to stop me from leading people into God’s presence and getting set free and healed, and I wasn’t about to let that happen. Skyler let the team know I was still going on. Once I arrived at the venue, I got dressed, warmed up, and went onto that stage. Though the physical pain was still intense, I pressed through it, and we had an incredible night of worship.

  When the evening came to an end, I sat in my dressing room thinking about the day’s events. I realized I needed to forgive myself for giving in to the fear. But I also realized that while it was a good choice to press through and keep worshiping, a day of reckoning was coming. I could not outrun the things God was wanting to address inside me. Fear and anxiety kept launching attacks, and I knew He wanted to set me free from that. I was still struggling to trust God—not just with myself, but also with my baby.

  That day of reckoning came soon after we returned from New Zealand. I had finally reached a point in my pregnancy where I had to slow down and begin to prepare for baby number two. When I did, it felt as though I had run smack into a wall. I had been running hard and refusing to rest, in part because there were some things inside me that I didn’t want to confront. Now, these things emerged in the quiet and finally got my attention. I felt God gently pulling on my heart and drawing me to Him. It was time to have an honest conversation about the fear and my struggle to trust Him.

  “Jesus, I’m scared to trust You with my babies,” I admitted. “I’m scared that You will let me down. I’m scared that You aren’t capable of taking care of them as well as me. I’m also scared that You won’t take care of them the way I want You to.”

  Ugh. Those last words hit me like a slap in the face. My need for control had surfaced once again. Pregnancy was a situation I couldn’t fully control. I was eating healthy, taking my vitamins, and doing everything I could to protect and nurture this human growing inside me, but ultimately, I could not control whether this baby grew the way it should. I couldn’t control how the birth would go or whether the baby would live or die. I hated feeling out of control! In my desperation, I had grasped for anything that would give me a sense of control—in this case, I had attempted to build a wall of busyness between myself, my baby, and Jesus.

  I could feel the tender love of my Father begin to pour out on me
. It was like a warm, gentle breeze that surrounded me, blowing away the dust that had settled over truths I knew but had been refusing to remember. Jesus reminded me of how much He loved me, that I belonged to Him, and that He created me. He reminded me of the time He had shown me how He created me—how He ripped a chunk from His own heart and brought me back to that place in His heart where only I fit.

  As I remembered the love of my Father and Creator, I understood that this was the same love He had for my babies. He created them and chose them, just like He chose me. He loved them with the same unrelenting love with which He loved me. The Bible says in 1 John 4:18 that “perfect love drives out fear.” My need for control was totally rooted in fear—no discussion needed. As God stirred up His love inside me, it began to push fear out, enabling me once again to surrender my need for control to the One who holds my life and future. I saw myself putting my babies in God’s outstretched arms, and I felt His peace that goes beyond my understanding resting on my mind and heart.

  The Final Battles

  Skyler and I had decided we wanted to have our second birth in Redding with the same midwife we had used with Wyatt. Our house in Redding had finally sold, but we wouldn’t close until all the renovations from the flooding had been repaired. The closing date was set for December 22, 2014, and our baby was due on Christmas Day. Some friends had a rental in Redding that they made available for us to use, and on the first of December, we signed the papers on our house and hunkered down to await the arrival of our baby.

  Just a few days after arriving in Redding, we were driving to a checkup when we got a phone call from Banning. Alyssa Quilala, wife of Chris Quilala, was eight months pregnant, and they had just received the devastating news that their baby did not have a heartbeat. I hung up the phone, leaned back in the passenger seat, and began to pray out loud for the peace of God and for their baby boy to come back to life. Suddenly my praying turned into frantic, incoherent screams, and I began to hyperventilate as I was swallowed whole by a massive, dark wave of fear. I could feel myself sinking into an abyss of terror. Just one thought surged through my mind like a runaway train: What if my baby dies?