I did what they told me not to.
I did something you never want to do.
I LET THE RACE BECOME MY NORMAL
I don’t know how it happens, and it’s a difficult thing to stop: letting the race become normal life is one of the worst things I could do. But I did. I guess it’s natural, for a human to become so used to their environments that they just neglect to see the amazing in everyday things. I’ve been listening to a series of sermons from the church that I attend at home, and it’s all about serving. In this series, it talks some about how we get so busy serving in our lives, that we forget to keep God in the center, and we loose sight of the miracles that happen on a daily basis. I’ve learned, since being on the race, that this is unfortunately just the way of life in America. We do things because we have to, because we all want to ‘win the rat race’ if you will. We don’t have a natural way of doing things simply because they bring Glory to God or because others will benefit from them, whether we will admit it or not, we do things because we will benefit from them. Even in our serving of other in America, it is hard to say that many people serve solely to bring glory to God and not because it makes them feel good about themselves and gives them value. It’s true for me at home, and unfortunately, it has become true of the race as well.
Let me explain.
When I first signed up for the race, I was so passionate about going to these countries just so that I could spread the love of Jesus to people who need to hear it. In had read a few blogs and heard a few people say about how they got so engrossed in the work that they were assigned to on the race, that not only did they not get the full race experience, they also miss out on crucial opportunities to minister to people.
One of the things that we are doing this month is planting chili pepper trees for the farm community that we are ministering to. I grew up the most farm girl out of anyone on our team, and still I HATE this job. There are so many other things I would rather do than plant chili pepper trees. It’s hard work, hoeing the soil which can’t even been considered soil because it is so freaking hard all the time. Squatting down for hours on end in the (literally) blistering sun, and being covered in dirt and sweat and grime all whole trying to avoid the massive colonies of red fire ants every few feet that just love to attack you up your pants legs or in your shoes where you can’t get them out. At the end of the day, I hate planting chilies. Lucky for me, we got to send several days this month doing that and only that. I was miserable, I was grouchy and had a terrible attitude about it the entire time. You know why? Because I let the work that we were doing become the task instead of bring God into it and letting HIM become the task. Planting Chili pepper trees became something I had to do, it was the job that was given to us to preform, and we did it, somewhat willingly, but only because it’s what we were told to do, not because we saw the ability to serve God through it.
I realize now that I have done a lot of this not only in my life, but on the race so far as well. Not everything I have done in ministry has been like this, but I can name several instances where I preformed the work that we were assigned simply because it was assigned to us, not because I saw the opportunity to serve God through it. As it sit here now almost at the end of our time in Thailand, I regret the way that I approached our time planting chili pepper trees. It was hard, sometimes disgusting work, there is no doubting that, but I wish that I would have looked at those moments while I was in them and thought about how God was showing up. I wish that I would have kept in mind how by helping this family plant chili pepper trees for hours on end, we were helping them to build a way to reach out to the surrounding Buddhist community, and because of that, many people were considering changing the faith that they had in Buddha, to a new faith in Jesus Christ. In those moments though, that is not what I thought about. In those moments, I was more worried about how tired and dirty and sore I was than about the work that God was doing through us in those fields. You serve in the ministry that you’re working with for the month, you preform the tasks that are given to you, and that’s pretty much that. This life has become normal for us. Having geckos live in our bedrooms has become normal to us. Not having internet whenever we want it has become normal to us. BEING ABLE TO TOUCH THE LIVES OF PEOPLE WHO DONT BELIEVE IN JESUS HAS BECOME NOTMAL TO US, and I hate that more than I hate planting chili pepper trees. I hate that I have let the race and the life that I am living here become so normal that I forget to make God the center of it all, even though he is the only reason we are here in the first place. A huge part of the sermon series that I have been listening to talks about how neglecting to make God the center of the serving, you miss the miracles that are happening all around you. I don’t want that. I don’t want to miss the miracles that I should get to experience every day of my life, especially on the race. I want to look at every ridiculously gorgeous sunset that we see each night here and see God. I want to look every person who we come into contact with in the eye and know that when they tell us they are blessed by us, that we were in fact able to bring Jesus to them. And I want to plant chili peppers with grace and love, knowing that it doesn’t matter if my thighs are sore from squatting so much and I am so dirty it could take weeks to get it all off of me. I want to see God in every single moment that we have here, and soak it all up until I’m so full of it that it just explodes out of me and people can see the love of Jesus through us.
I still need to raise approximately $4500 to keep me on the race. If you would like to donate, please do so to the left of this blog. Thank you 🙂
