Last month was hard. India was a month of limited to no freedom and lots of uneasiness in my heart. The culture of India is so polar opposite from the western world that I found myself feeling suffocated by trying to fit the mold of what our contacts wanted me to be. Please know, I did feel honored to serve with them and I loved them so much.
I guess that sometimes the month I longed for was home. Honestly. It was heartbreaking to feel so hopeless. As we rolled out of our village a tsunami sized wave of relief rushed over us.
Naturally, it was not over. We drove to meet up with our squad and stayed there for a couple days. Then, we went into hydrobad where I had little fish give me a pedicure. That was neat. Finally we rolled up to mumbi ready for 5 days of debrief…
Most times debrief is pretty nice but when we got to the YWAM base we found mice in our toilets and one room for all of us.
No place to be alone.
no place to cry.
no place to walk around in my undies and sing into my hairbrush…
Basically, again, our expectations were wrecked and we had no outlet to turn to for refreshment except from The Lord. It turned out to be an amazing time of worship and revelation of the Fathers love.
But I was still ready to peace out of India. When we finally arrived at the airport, we were told that our flight was moved back two days. At this point, we also had no place to stay and it was three in the morning. We searched out some options only to stumble upon a brothel. . . Guess where we didn't stay.
At every corner there was a hurdle to jump but most of them involved me learning to give up my own flesh in the midst of a hard time. Or trying to crumble my idea of comfort and find all of my peace and rest in the Lord. His continual patience and grace with me has moved me into a deeper dependence upon Him. It's in times like this where you really realize that you can't make it on your own.
It was in these moments where my human strength was so weak and so evident but by God's grace I made it and maybe even came out a little better because of it. Plus, we finally made it to Nepal and we are so in love with everything about it. Even the monkeys.
He has given us a new joy. We sing the doxology everytime the electricity comes on. We play games. We explore. We laugh. We talk about all things girly. We teach classes to the coolest people ever. And we are obsessed with how incredibly beautiful nepalize people are!
We have learned to put down what we want in hopes that what God brings will make us look more like Jesus. We are fighting a hard battle. However God is constantly reminding me that his mercies are new everyday and joy comes every morning.
The World Race has so much more for me because The Lord has so much more for me. I only have three more months but I'm not anywhere near done.
