My story is a weird story, that is for certain. The reason I choose this specific route was because of a prophetic word. A person in my small group saw a vision of me in the Ukraine/Romania with a blond and another dude. At that time, I was not ready to receive the word, and shut her down before she could finish. So when it came time to pick a route, God kept pricking my heart to go to Eastern Europe. I have always been interested to see what Eastern Europe would hold. Especially Ukraine.
We arrive in a beautifully quant city called Rivne. Rivne was a city of 300,000, not a major city, not a massively historic place, but a place where the people are real and the average live. Our host’s were two women named Tania. They took amazing care of us, and coming from Africa that was not too hard. Give us an apartment to ourselves, hot showers, a washer, and a kitchen and we were happy campers. Our ministry would be teaching English to Adults. Our job, was very literally to be the bait to attract people in to learn English from English speakers, and in the mean time they got to hear the message God has for them.
Malawi was hard enough because I felt it was my purpose to ‘support’ my team to the fullness of my ability. It failed miserably. Yet this month my team supported me. The Christian English school we were putting on would have 5 classes: beginner, pre intermediate, intermediate, post intermediate, and advanced. My team decided I should take the Advanced Class. This is something I was not going to take for myself. I was going to be okay teaching any class, I would have enjoyed the advanced class, but again, it was not something I was going to volunteer for. My team knows how I like big words, and proactively made me the instructor of the advanced class.
My job was going to be to use big words, have conversation, and ask hard questions. All things I do relatively well. My classes ranged from 12-19 people. All with college degrees, all well traveled, and at least half the class had post graduate degrees. This was the most intelligent, educated class of individuals I had talked to all ‘race, and I loved it. I thoroughly miss big, educated conversation, and I had no idea how much I thrived off of them until this class.
My classes included a silly ice breaker (usually an improve game), a passage of scripture I would read, then discussion. The goal of the school was to get the message across about what it looks like to follow Jesus. The Tania’s started me off with the story of Abram, then skipped over to Joshua leading the people into the promise land, then straight to Jesus. My class is not stupid, they know the Bible, they know the story of Jesus. They also know that the Bible was written to a culture around 13th-century BC, ergo nomadic sheep herders. Therefore just reading the Bible to these people won’t do anything, I am going to need to explain why this is important, and why Jesus is important, and what is the historical context to why this is happening. Through these classes I really got to explore the concept of a spiritual journey, and what Jesus does in/through a spritual journey.
The first stage of a spiritual journey is Abandonment.
This is the LORD calling Abram away. To give up comfort and security and move into the realm of the unknown and the uncertain. This is where you lose everything you ever held onto. This is what Jesus is calling us to do, to leave our father and mother, to let the dead bury the dead, to leave social constraints and walk into the uncertain with Him. This can happen through our own free will, or we can be forced into this either through loss, trauma, or added responsibility.
Our class talked about social constraints and certain platitudes they felt like they ‘had to’ maintain as part of the Ukrainian culture, just as I talked about the some of the American social constraints we as millennials face. The urge to be perfect, the constraint to look and live life a certain way, and just how scared we are to move against the grain and forsake everything given to us (everything that makes us entitled). Ukrainian culture is very similar to American culture in that regard. Since the country is still relatively young (less then 30 years old), I urged the young people in my class to craft a culture for Ukraine, not to just accept the culture handed down to them. That is scary, because it means the older generation will not understand them, and most likely condemn them.
The second stage of a spiritual journey is Death.
This is Jesus saying pick up your cross daily. This is Jesus saying if you lose your life you will gain it. This is the understanding that you will never actually make it. In order to move onto the next stage of life, the previous stage has to die. This can be an ego death, or a failure, or life throwing a knuckleball and your entire life comes crumbling down and you find where rock bottom is. This is where you have no hope. This is your knees hitting the floor, arms reaching for the heavens, crying out into the oblivion for some answer or reason. This is Death. This is losing yourself. This the point of no return. This is walking into the river Jordan, into certain death. This is Jonah surrendering himself to be thrown overboard, to face death head on and to accept its fate.
The third stage of a spiritual journey is Ecstasy.
This is the resurrection. This is new life. This is moment the battle overtakes you, and somehow/someway you become stronger because of it. This is the understanding that you can not be beaten, and you can have life and life abundantly. This the moment of individualization transfiguration. This is the divine spark inside all of us coming alive. This is moment everything changed.
This English School we were helping the Tania’s put on, ended with a full blown camp session. 2 days away from the comforts of home. Complete with bond fires and camp songs. It was here I was able to get my class to really open up about their own personal experiences. They shared their lives openly with me, as I has shared my life openly with them.
A couple of students shared experiences of how they walked through an unforeseen, uncertain circumstance and how it ended even better then it could have started. Students shared problems with visas and immigration, they talked about graduating from college without a purpose searching for meaning, they shared relationship problems. Some students had experienced solutions that seemly appeared to come from a divine/impossible sources. Other students opened up how they still didn’t know how their problems would be solved and they were at that point, close to ego death or approaching the edge.
Jesus did an amazing thing, by ‘conquering death’. He proclaimed that death is not the end, but the beginning. That through death we are actually made stronger. By failing, and falling we are made new. We are now something completely new, never before seen or experienced. Life is the force infused with divine potential, and when we take a hit of this life force every cell, every environment we inhabit is infused with divine potential and goodness.
However, we can never live in this ecstasy moment, we can not live a life on a high. Yes, in life we get take a road that leads us from Glory to Glory. However, life is not rainbows and light. Life is made beautiful by shades of gray, contrast, sadness, and trials.
The fourth stage of a spiritual journey is Walking It Out.
This part is the hardest. This is understanding and experiencing the resurrection power that raised Christ from the dead throughout your daily life, even when you don’t see or experiencing anything at all. That is hard. It is much easier to forget the experience. To not remember the lessons learned during the journey.
To Be Honest, I don’t know how to explain this step.
I know that in life we repeat this process over and over through our spiritual walk. This is Life. A journey to walk away, to die, and to become something new and experience life in brand new ways.
This month my team enabled me to fully embrace who I am. They gave me a platform to speak from my heart. For so long, during this trip, I would feel that my line of thinking was weird or off-putting. It is not mainline Christianity (that is for sure). It is something else, I really don’t even know what it is, but it something I am learning to accept about myself. This month, my team helped me embrace that part of myself. I am not crazy, ok I am a little bit crazy but in a good way. I am accepted and loved just the way I am. In fact, I can love myself for my line of thinking. I won’t preach you the gospel you are use-to hearing, I will present you something new, yet something oddly familiar. God is already acting in your life. He already has been. You have been walking this journey whether you know it or not. The Divine spark in you is waiting for you to abandon the things holding you down, and accept the challenge. Take the Journey and Be Changed.
Ukraine has come and gone. I don’t know if this what God had planned for me during this month, via the prophetic word I received. Maybe the word was just the spark to get me moving, and to urge me to start the spiritual journey that encapsulate the Worldrace experience. Maybe I am right were I need to be, and God is perfectly okay with me, and loves me just for me. Maybe it is time I do the same, and love me for me.
