It has been approximately 246 days since I left home.
8 months 1 day, 35 weeks 1 day, 5,904 hours, 354,240 minutes, and 21,254,440 seconds.
I have been to 10 different countries. Worked with 9 different ministries. Led 3 different teams ranging from 6-8 women. Been on a total of 4 teams.
Experienced many different cultures. Not just from country to country but city to city.
I have fallen in love with people, cultures, food, and places knowing at the end of each month it always ended with goodbye.
I have seen brokenness, desperation, hope deferred, poverty, and sickness.
I have cried out on behalf of broken cultures. I have felt burdened every month for every country.
And I am tired. So tired.
The thought of experiencing one more culture tormented by the work of satan makes me sick.
I have questioned whether or not God is at work in the places I have seen. I have doubted His goodness. I have lacked trust in who He is.
I have cried. Oh, have I cried.
And today, I feel THE FARTHEST I have ever felt from God.
I question what I did wrong. I beg for His help. I wonder why my obedience to Him has resulted in a year filled with hardship and heart break.
And all I can do is SIT, and WAIT, and TRUST that He is working this all out for His glory and my good.
Sometimes it takes moments, moments of being prayed over by my community back home. Sometimes it takes remembrance, remembering the things that the Lord has done in my life and the things I have seen.
I am learning that it’s ok to be in this place. A place filled with questions and doubt. A place that I feel so empty and hopeless. Because at the end of the day, God still looks at me with love-filled eyes longing to restore my HOPE. My FAITH.
So while I long for home, I am fighting to remain present. I am fighting to remain in the presence of the Lord. Because I know that this is a fight worth a lifetime.
Lamentations 3:25+26
“The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
