This is Uncle Bob. Actually, that’s not his real name. That’s just what we call him. Every Wednesday through Friday, we find ourselves here at the special needs home in Sungai Petani, Malaysia, singing songs, dancing, and playing games with Uncle Bob. He doesn’t speak English but persists in talking to us every day. So we make up half the stuff he says and talk back. About 56 years old (if he’s telling us the truth) and full of life, smiles, and gifts. He can draw pretty much anything he thinks about, truly has a gift in making you feel interesting, can sing on tune to Jingle Bells and Happy Birthday, can juggle, palm reads (I’m apparently going to marry a rich man and have four babies, haha), AND break dances! It doesn’t take much to smile around this guy. He makes up his own dance moves and ends many sentences with shaking your hand and saying, “ok, thank you, Happy New Year.”
Malaysia. Who knew the struggles, tears, hurts, triggers, and burdens that were awaiting me here? I never thought my heart could be so heavy after experiencing so much healing. Sometimes I forget how good the devil is at tearing me down, which is accompanied by me forgetting how good God is at lifting me up. I’ve felt so much pressure this month to respond the perfect Christian way (whatever the hec that is…), so much fear from darkness and nightmares, so much exhaustion from lack of sleep, so much shame from past mistakes that I thought were over, so much comparison, so many emotions, so much sadness and confusion from not seeming to be able to hear His voice this month, so little honesty and vulnerability from myself towards my team, God, and even me, so much frustration with new and different sins, so many times I’ve cried to God alone in the middle of the night, so many walls I keep putting up between God and I (I really don’t know why I continue to do this with Him…), so timid to just accept grace, SO. MUCH. OF. A. MESS.
I know that by admitting my mess, it really just makes me human. But sometimes I feel like I take the cake when it comes to being a messy Christian. I guess all of us do. Why do we, especially Christians, try to be so put together anyway? What’s so bad at admitting our messes? Our mess is so obvious to God. How silly we must look by covering it up. Humans are so fragile. Just physically, if we fall down we get scratched and bleed. Those wounds heal though. Hallelujah we can’t remember physical pain. But what about wounds that cut deeper? Emotional scars take longer to heal and for some people never do. Mean words are spoken and before you know it, YEARS later your brain keeps playing them over and over like a broken record to remind you that your heart still hurts from this. And sometimes our feelings are hurt simply by misinterpretation. And then lies build up and we continue to misinterpret the world. We are so fragile. We are such a mess. We are so weak. We NEED so much grace.
Joy. As I’ve said before, I think God allows us to be weak so He can hold us more. When we realize our inadequacy and weakness, we become dependent. Unfortunately, we tend to depend on the wrong things. When I realize how little these things satisfy, I look for the source. And then I feel Gods strong arms not just reaching for me, but wrapped around me like they’ve never left. Suddenly He’s not so distant. Suddenly His voice is clearer then ever. And how would this ever have been accomplished if it hadn’t had been for my mess? Being a mess gives me joy.
So yeah…Malaysia has been my hardest month so far. It’s just sucked sometimes, honestly. But when is God not wanting to lift our load? He longs to give us rest. He longs to give us the grace that our very existence depends on. There is a verse somewhere in the Bible (don’t judge me I don’t have a Bible this month) that says something about how He waits on high to have compassion for us. I think it’s in the Old Testament? His desire is never for us to carry our own burdens cause He knows we can’t handle it.
And this is just one of the ways that He’s lifted my load this month. Some days are hard and some days I get to talk to Uncle Bob.
He has called me higher,
Jenn
