Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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Something inside of me is broken, and I DON’T want it fixed.

It happened somewhere along the journey. In bits and pieces, quietly and assuredly, cracks were working their way into my being, into my heart and my very soul. Tearing into the fabric of me, often producing tears (of the watery sort) and sighs filled with longing, they came and they stayed. And they’re not disappearing with time.

…((crack))…In the village of Nicaragua where we poured into teenager’s lives.
…((crack))…In the orphanage in Cambodia where we loved HIV+ orphans who have no hope for things of this world.
…((crack))…In the dirt paths of Nsoko, Swaziland where we met children and grandmothers whose lives are in shambles because of AIDS wrecking their country, yet who cling to the hope of Christ.
…((crack))…In the dusty streets of Delhi where lights for Christ are so few and far between, yet God is working in people’s lives.

I live now in a dissonance of the heart. I am a part of one world but long for another. Yet it is my duty to live as one fully alive in that world I long for, the Kingdom of heaven, and in so doing, to see it come to pass in moments and glimpses of “oh!” so brief and beautiful I have to close my eyes to burn the sight on the retinas of my heart’s eye.

As the cracks come, a light shines through them, revealing glimpses of Kingdom. Kingdom looks like…hope in the face of an orphan in Swaziland when she gets another meal to eat. Joy in the face of a child in India when she gets another Auntie to love and to love her for a little while. Light shining n the face of a teenager in Nicaragua when she talks of her passionate love for Christ, Her Saviour. These are the glimpses of the world I long for, the heavenly Kingdom, which someday will be established forever.

I am writing from home, Boone, North Carolina. Yet I feel here a strangeness, a foreigner-ness, that I feel in every other part of the world I’ve visited. Yes, I was born and raised here; but there’s something in me that no longer fits into these small-town-America streets. It’s all these cracks and breaks and tears that set me apart. It’s the heart of my Father, my Saviour, being implanted in mine bit by bit as I journey for His glory. It’s the Holy Spirit leading me onward in a quest to use my given small talents to earn more to give back to Him when He returns.
 
Everybody seems to think I’ll be this way for a little while, then go back to “normal life” and get back to “real life” as an American, perhaps working a nine-to-five job with a regular paycheck and such. But I don’t ever WANT to be normal again. I don’t ever WANT to fit into the mold. I want my life to be fully His, wherever I am and whatever I am doing. I want to depend on Him for my very breath. I want Him to be my everything, my all in all, my reason for living and for dying if it came to that. I want to be God, with skin on, bearing His Love to a dying world. I want to be Katie “Christ” Rowland for life. 
 
This isn’t a passing phase.

Keep breaking me, God. I don’t want to go back to who I was before. I don’t want to forget the faces of the unseen and broken and hurting and lost people of this world. I want to see your love overwhelming them and your glory invading this earth…

Let your light so shine before men…