The fever burned hot that night in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan. I lay semi-conscious in a tangle of blankets on a mattress on the floor of the one room apartment I shared with two other teammates. Pain wracked my body as my internal temperature rose and sent me into fits of writhing, losing all sense of direction and position. The noises of the night – the yelling on the street outside our window, the incessant beat of house music from nearby clubs, the howling dogs, the flies buzzing furiously about our room – all blended together in an agonizing cacophony, which to my fevered mind sounded like the knell of madness.
I dared not allow myself to slip into sleep. To me it seemed there was no telling, if I were to fall fully into this vortex of pain and altered consciousness, whether I would have the strength to escape it or whether I would be lost to it forever. Ultimately, I would awake in the morning. More accurately, the fever would abate and I would become more aware. No sleep came to me that night. And, most likely, I was never in any actual danger. But the mind of a man suffering from fever often conjures terrifying fictions that to him seem all too real.
The fever remained for a day, rising occasionally to tear at me and then settling as though hovering in wait. And I remained, bedridden, for a day and a half, rising to my feet on the second day, and well on the third day. Or so I thought.
After my brief respite, the 4th day brought me something…explosive. I will spare you the details, except to say that it was excruciatingly painful, to the point of causing me to groan out curses in the middle of the night before I knew what I’d said or which super smash-bros character had just falcon-punched my gut.
The plague was back, and it had obviously gone through an 80’s movie style transformational workout montage. What horrifying parasite had nested in my bowels like the creature from Alien? What obscure central Asian virus was ravaging my body and my sanity? What questionable street food or feast prepared by a village family had been the harbinger of this suffering?
Dried apricots. Of all of the strange and gag inducing foods – the fermented horse milk foremost among them – it was an unwashed dried apricot. The “least among these.” The anticlimax of that revelation was not lost on me. And when after I recovered from the food poisoning I immediately came down with a cold, I was no longer even surprised. Just tired. And that wasn’t even the worst struggle I had that month.
People get this idea that when you travel to far off lands or live a missional lifestyle that the hardest parts about it, other than leaving what is familiar, are the weird foods you have to eat and the parasites and viruses and other ailments. Others of you who know my squad’s route might think that the hardest challenge is dealing with the potential dangers inherent in the 10/40 Window. Some of you are secretly thinking that the worst thing would actually be limited wifi availability, you just don’t want to say that out loud and sound ridiculous. Your secret is safe with me. Well, I guess not. This is an open blog on the internet after all. Sorry about that.
But that idea about the true challenges of serving abroad is a mistaken one, and it stems from another equally misguided idea – that those who choose to leave everything they know and love for a little while to serve others abroad and walk with God are people who have it all figured out. People who, while they may not be perfect, are pretty close by whatever religious standard is most popular among your circle. And if they don’t have everything figured out and haven’t quite “ascended on high into the clouds” on a faith-fueled jet pack after vanquishing evil with the Sword of Righteousness and receiving the Quickening,
they will obviously have done so by the end of their formative ninja training as a holy crime-fighter, er, I mean, their mission trip abroad.
Now I know what you’re all thinking:
So I might have worded it a bit hyperbolically, but that line of thinking is not far from what many believe – that some level of spiritual perfection must be achieved and all of one’s affairs must be in perfect order before one is qualified to serve. That is false.
Do you know what the hardest part about serving abroad has been for me? It hasn’t been the food, or the sickness, or the language barriers, or the prolonged absence of any and all American comforts. And as for the danger, I addressed that in my blog about Turkey.
The hardest part has been waking up every morning and wrestling with the question “Will anything I do today matter? Will any change made in someone else’s life this week, if any at all, last? Do I even know where to go and what to do to actually achieve something worthwhile? What is my purpose? What am I doing here?”
They’re the same crushing questions that weigh upon the woman who sits at her desk in her office from 9 to 5 everyday, or the man who stands behind the cash register for time and a half, or the guy who rips dry-wall out of old houses for a living. You’d think answering those questions positively would get easier when your job is to play with orphans and dig wells for impoverished villages and bring food to refugees. But it doesn’t.
And sometimes the most haunting question becomes “Have I made any progress at all in my walk with Christ, or will I leave this journey as the same man I was when I got on the plane in New York?”
For the entire two weeks I spent in Kazakhstan for ministry, and the the next two weeks in Kyrgyzstan, I struggled with a desperate sense of restlessness that would not abate. No matter what I did or where I went, I never felt I’d gone far enough or done all that was necessary.
God led me to a ministry contact in Kazakhstan, out of the blue. God took me to literal mountain tops in the Tian Shan range, led me and my team to villages to serve the persecuted church and minister with Muslim families, had me teach Sunday school and share my testimony with various churches, and even allowed me opportunities to lay hands on and pray for the sick and injured. Still, I had no peace.
Two weeks later, God began to bring me back to a state of peace and of joy. Part of the answer was establishing rhythms in my life, like doing five things in which I found joy and worth everyday no matter what. The other part of relief was taking it one day at time. But the rest is still a mystery to me – why ministering and pushing myself as hard as I did brought no sense of peace.
None if it satisfied the urgent need to go somewhere and do something. None of it felt like enough or provided adequate answers to the questions I mentioned above. I didn’t know why.
What I do know is that I am flawed, just like everyone back home. I fail, just like everyone back home. And just like everyone back home, I do not have everything in my life – all of its challenges and hardships and questions and doubts – figured out. And God does not require that of those who want to walk with Him. I wrestle with the same existential crises that all of you wrestle with, and that’s okay. That’s what makes us human. I am no less useful or close to God in light of all of that. Neither are you.
As one of our squad coaches, Gary Black, is fond of saying “The older I get, the less I find I know.”
So if you desire to do the things that my squad and I are doing; If you want to walk with Jesus, to go with him to the remote and dangerous places where His one lost sheep out of the flock of 100 can be found, you don’t need perfection. You don’t need to have your life figured out or to have all the questions of faith answered. You don’t need to be Superman. You just need to be willing.
And if you think that simply serving abroad will answer all of your doubts and make you a hero of faith, let me assure you that more questions than answers await you out there, and the only change you’ll find is the kind that comes from seriously pursuing the heart of the Father. The doubts that plague you, the wounds that pain you, and the sin that binds you will not suddenly disappear if you go to serve.
You will face the same challenges of the heart that you face at home, and more. But if you go on a journey with Him, you won’t find escape. Instead, you will be in the best place to deal with those things, to overcome, and to enter into more intimacy than you ever believed you could experience with God. And in the midst of all of that, He will make you a blessing to those around you, whether you see it or not.
So don’t let imperfection and fear of failure, or inflated ideals about those who have served before you hold you back. Step out your door. Let your journey with Him begin and embrace the challenges that await you.
