I feel gross immediately after getting out of the shower. I am sweating and covered in bug bites before I even get all my clothes on. Speaking of clothes, I have never wanted to wear them less. I just want to lay on the cold tile floor under the fan for hours. The humidity, though familiar to that of Florida, is always pushing on you from all sides. It’s less like the “warm, wet hug” I jokingly call it at home, and more like laying under a pile of hot, soaking down comforters in a sauna. Our house this month has a tin roof. I told a teammate the other day that I literally know what a cake feels like – I think we are actually baking. So no, I don’t want to wear clothes (though Cambodia’s modesty standards require us to wear more here than most other places). Those clothes? They now all have holes. Holes from wear and tear. Holes from hand-washing. Holes from running into metal fences and door nails. Holes from children dragging behind you. Holes from ants literally eating through your clothing. The same ants that chew through your tent, infest your food, and bite you all night while you fight for sleep. The ants are joined by mosquitoes and flies and beetles and cockroaches – a relentless battle rages each night against the mosquito net fort that we didn’t have for the first week in Cambodia. In a recent discovery, I learned I am also allergic to our only real defense – deet bug spray – which is unfortunate, seeing as how it is my new favorite perfume. It goes on immediately after each shower, after waking, and several more times during the day (bring on the hives). It’s great that this new perfume matches my physical appearance so well – always sweating, forget make up, huge bags under my eyes from restless sleep, and (hopefully) a few more laugh lines (if I’m going to be blessed with wrinkles, I want to earn them joyfully, not worrying). Plus, I have greenish-blue-Rainbow-fish hair (still no regrets about that). I’m pretty sure that I look terrible 8 days out of the week.
And you know what?
I really can’t complain.
It’s what I prayed for…what I begged God for…and every bit of what I expected this entire year to look like.
All that might have sounded like complaining or whining, but when I read it, I hear one thing:
You have reached your destination.
This is a phrase my team has adopted to keep us present. Each morning, I think to myself “You have arrived.” Don’t look ahead. Don’t dream about home. Today is what you prayed for. Today is where God has you. Today, every day, you have reached your destination.
Last week, in women’s bible study, I had to tell myself this over and over. In a mangy-dog infested yard in a muddy village, I sat, sweating profusely, and being eaten alive (I think this is actually a literal statement) by Mosquitos. I could not focus. I could not think. And then, as the women sung hymns in their language, God intervened. In an instant that also felt like a year (or 10 months), I realized “I have arrived.” When I imagined the race, I absolutely thought I would be sitting around with women in a jungle village in Asia, praying for them, singing with them, loving them. I knew there would be mosquitoes. I knew I would be sweaty. I knew I would be uncomfortable. But I wanted, and still want, to be uncomfortable.
It’s easy to dream of home – of family and the holidays and a bed and a shower and having some semblance of control over my life. It’s easy to worry about home – about money, about a job, about living in a relatively new place, about the fact that I will soon be hundreds and thousands of miles away from my community for the last year.
But why do that? Why worry? Why wish away what I have right in front of me?
I have reached my destination.
In 6 weeks, I’ll be home longing for the bible study in the jungles of Asia. I’ll be crying for the days I played Legos with Cambodian kindergarteners and taught them the alphabet song. I’ll wish I was taking selfies or skipping down the path with village children, listening to their infectious giggles and excited streams of Khmer because they’ve forgotten I don’t speak it. I’ll be wanting to trade my comfortable life for a mattress on a floor in a humid, bug-filled house with cold showers and no privacy. And I know even then, I’ll have to remind myself not to look back. To use every lesson I learned, to remember every story I heard, and pray for every face I’ve seen, but not to wish my life away, there, either.
When I wake up 6 weeks from now in my own bed (just kidding, I’m stealing my brother’s), I will tell myself: You have arrived. God knew you would be here today. This is where He wants you to be. Put your heart and your head where your feet are.
I think, no matter who we are, what our life looks like, or what path we are on, we all need to tell ourselves this daily. Each day, tell yourself, “I have arrived.” God knows the job you have to go to. God knows the struggles you will face. God knows exactly what joys and sorrows today will hold. And God still calls you to this day. So instead of wishing it away, dig in. Find His blessings. Search for His purpose. Love.
You have reached your destination.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
– 2 Corinthians? ?4?:?16-18?
