Another month on the World Race has ended and I can hardly believe that there’s only ONE month left! Our most recent month in Cambodia was such a growing time for me. As I suppose anyone would feel after 10 months of ministry, you feel poured out and empty—truly feeling the effects of loving and loving and loving and loving people in a continuous succession of places around the globe. We all joked that the World Race really was meant to be a nine month trip, wasn’t it?! Wasn’t it?? …anyone? …Bueller?
Through the tiredness, the feelings of being washed up, dried out, fed up and just plain sick and tired of meeting new people to love and pour your heart out to when you just don’t have any more love to give!!! …(sigh)…God taught me about himself and really what he’s after.
Isn’t it just so easy to choose him when it’s easy? I love those times when frankly, I’m just in love with Jesus. Where I can picture myself frolicking in a field of daisies holding hands with the one I love and just being so a part of things that everything just feels right in the world and I know my place and I know I’m loved and things are…GOOD…and you breathe in the air and you just sigh and know that this is right and the love just flows so easily, doesn’t it?
And then you’re in Cambodia and it’s month TEN of the World Race and there are no daisies anymore and you can’t remember the last time you frolicked and your heart feels more pain than love because you’ve seen these things in the world that hurt God’s heart and now they hurt your heart too and the only thing that can describe your feelings is…HEAVY. But you hate moping around with this weight and people begin to think you’re just becoming disillusioned and tired and maybe a bit whiny because you’re thinking about home (weren’t there some daisies I remember in that place?? I think I can recall them there??…) And sometimes you just want to roll up in a ball on the floor because you can’t fake being happy but you can’t handle the weight either and this whole thing is just confusing and what was so wrong with things being EASY Lord?!?
Maybe that’s just the thing: We’re longing for easiness instead of the perfect love from the Father that made that place easy in the first place.
And so this is what God’s been teaching me this month. Choosing to focus on his love, his promises, his word, and his truth and not on the things that those gifts bring to my life. His love ruins me and I’ll frolic in a field like an idiot just because I have to because that’s the condition of my heart and I’m just so lovesick I can’t control it! Or I’ll walk into an orphanage and I’ll carry in that love and waste myself on dirty little kids that need to be held, that need to be thrown up in the air and spun around once in a while, or that need someone to tell them how beautiful that scribble on a piece of paper looks, or that need a pat on the head or a little wink and a smirk that says I LOVE YOU. I am lovesick here too and it doesn’t make sense that I’m not frolicking but yet I feel the same feeling. I’m dirty and sweaty and yet my heart yearns and I am positively bursting with love. The tears fall from my face because I am so in awe of my God and his beautiful little face that I’ve now seen in ten different countries around the world.
This is not easy. I never really thought it would be and I never thought that I could frolic every day, but I really think that this is the secret. I need to be in that secret place with him and I need to choose to get there even when the circumstances are rough and I’m growing tired and am ready for home and disillusionment is in my peripheral view and it’s coming to get me and I’m overwhelmed and want to just stop and lay down and rest and why is the world spinning out of my control?!?!
Oh to just choose him under these circumstances!! What a joy will fill your heart and his and in that place my friends you will be able to frolic and even though the world won’t make any more sense than it did before and you won’t have an answer to the AIDS epidemic and poverty still smacks you in the face everyday and the injustice rips at your heart, you will be hidden in a place with Jesus that is so sweet and intimate. And then you will hear his voice from that place that says, go hold that little baby over there who has AIDS and sing to him and pray over him and then go sit down on the overpass with those two boys that are begging and just be with them. Yes, buy them food and then just sit like I sit with you because I love being with you.
When God tells you these things it’s an honor to do them and you don’t have to respond with a snuff and say, “Really God?? Why? Why now…can’t you see I’m doing this now?” No I’ve learned this lesson the hard way. Yes, he really means it and no you don’t have to question him—in fact, there can come a time in your life where your joy and your rest comes from a place of serving and loving those around you and not by simply reading a psalm every day. And it doesn’t have to kill you to give of yourself if you give when you’re in a place of rest with the lord.
And this is where I am now—choosing daily to rest in him and to see him in everything; to submit to his ways and to listen to his voice. It’s not about me doing good things or proving my worth or building up my personal portfolio of cute little kid pictures around the world. This is not the point. The point is going where I’m called and loving with the love he gives…and I have to give it. I choose to give it because he wants to frolic with them too. I know how I feel when I’m hand in hand in a field with Jesus and I want them to know that freedom too.
