Hi, friends.
It’s been a while.
It’s month 6 of my World Race, and I’m in Malaysia now. September–the start of autumn and the school year, the time of year that’s always symbolized new beginnings and fresh starts for me–is now fewer months away than the beginning of the Race. Life here in Malaysia looks like volunteering at a preschool and kindergarten, teaching colors and math and sharks & minnows to kids of all different nationalities. It looks like evenings spent at an outdoor restaurant down the street, sipping on teh o ais limau (iced lemon tea, no milk) from plastic bags and choosing between a consistent rotation of chicken fried rice and rice noodles, egg noodles, or vermicelli noodles with brown sauce. It looks like Wednesday nights at the outdoor market, walking by heaps and heaps of jackfruit and durian, waiting oh-so-patiently for the fresh donut people to fry up and sugar-coat a bagful of doughy goodness for me, and wandering along tables full of still-twitching crabs, silky-smooth squid and silvery sardines. It looks like rainy afternoons and nights spent in worship and conversation with our hosts and their ridiculously adorable three-month-old son.
Life looks a little bit like home, too, in the huge leafy green trees that tower over everything, and the brilliantly, magnificently colored sunsets after afternoon thunderstorms, and the most civilized and impeccably clean roads we’ve seen so far on the Race.
And I miss a lot of things about home, but to be honest, more than anything else right now I feel like I miss me.
I realized at training camp that I felt like my voice had been taken away, though not by any person or specific thing; and throughout the Race I’ve seen myself struggling with feeling like anyone around me will be at all interested in hearing what I have to say. I’ve realized recently that my head is absolutely saturated with thoughts of unworthiness–that God cannot possibly really delight in me, that no one could possibly feel anything different than my own disappointment regarding how well I live each day, that people around me merely tolerate my presence and input–much less actually like it. I feel like I’m a mess that I have no clue how to put back together, I feel unheard, and I feel so stubborn in knowing that these things aren’t true but somehow they’re still in my heart.
…because I’d tell anyone else that all those thoughts are false! But somehow when it comes to myself, my heart feels so incapable of holding on to the truths of Scripture and the truths that people speak over my life.
And feeling broken in my relationships with people would be enough on its own, but nothing hurts quite like feeling that God doesn’t hear me and I don’t hear Him, and that maybe it’s because somehow, after all this time, He might have finally decided to give up on me and move on and we’ll always be apart.
But…every time, every time, I reach that place where I’m so torn up about the distance between us, and the impossibility of reaching Him, and I feel like I can’t go on if this doesn’t change and I don’t see Him–
somehow this eternal, illimitable, indefinable God stoops down and finds a way to tell me
I’m still here…and I still love you. SO MUCH.
He’s used His people to speak over me–literally, out loud, in ways that simply are undeniable–that He is my shield, and He is in my boat throughout the storms I’m facing, and we are in harmony, and I am in good hands, and I am so, so loved.
And I’m honestly so confused sometimes, and so lost about how to receive all of it!
…but if this can truly be taken to heart, if this love can truly be walked in…
it’s going to win. And it’s going to be absolutely stunning.
Oh God, please, just…
keep up the fight for me.
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If you want to pray for me, I would absolutely love prayer for belief, for strength to hold on and press in to the truth, and joy and peace in believing. Pray for His Spirit in my team, and for our whole squad, that He would guard us and unite us so deeply that seriously nothing will be able to come against us and tear us from each other. And pray for our ministry–that there would be power in our prayers for the people around us and that we would unquenchably be salt and light through how we live.
My last financial deadline is the end of June, and absolutely amazingly, I’m less than $1000 away from my total! If you’d like to give, you can click on the support me link on this page, OR, if you want…you can click on anyone in my team and contribute to them, as they have need!
I’m so thankful for all of you–for taking the time to read this and hear me, for your giving, for your friendship and for your prayers. May you be blessed and challenged to know Jesus more deeply every day. <3
All my love!
Alicia
