Hi.
My name is Kelly.
I’m a people pleaser.
One of my biggest struggles is feeling a constant need to please people. I often find myself wondering what others think of me or if they’ll judge me if I say or do something. I realized the other day that this has been one of the biggest factors in me not sharing stories from the race. My fear of people hinders me from telling about the awesome ways I saw Jesus working while I was overseas.
Whelp, its out there now. I’m sitting here writing this, feeling incredibly insecure about how people are going to react, what they might say or think about what I’m writing. I know that my self-worth isn’t based on others opinions, but that knowledge doesn’t make the insecurities magically go away.
However, its been on my heart for a few weeks now to share something that happened in Honduras.
While we were in Honduras we had a lady named Linda staying with us for a while. She taught us a lot about praying for healing. One afternoon we went into the little town near the orphanage specifically to just walk around and pray for people. Before we left, Linda gathered up our team and the children that were coming with us to pray for who we would meet while we were out. While we were praying I got an image of me singing to an older deaf man in a white shirt and a big hat.
We spent several hours walking around praying for people and as we met back up with the whole group, I still hadn’t seen anyone that looked like the man I’d seen while praying. Right when we were getting ready to leave, 3 of the kids brought this old man to us, saying he had heard we were praying for healing for people and he asked us to pray for him. Low and behold, he was wearing a white shirt and a big hat. After we prayed for him, we asked if he could hear us, he couldn’t.
I stepped away for a moment. I remember praying, “Jesus, he can’t hear us. Singing to him won’t fix that, but if you want me to sing, I will.” So I started singing.
“Let nothing of our efforts stand, no legacy survive, unless the Lord does raise the house in vain its builders strive. To you who boast tomorrows gains, tell me what is your life? A mist that vanishes at dawn. All glory be to Christ! All glory be to Christ, our king, all glory be to Christ! His rule and covenant alone, all glory be to Christ!”
Silence.
I turn and look at the old man.
He had tears streaming down his face.
“You sing beautifully,” he whispered.
I was utterly dumbfounded. Jesus had restored this mans hearing while I sang to him.
Even sitting here now, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around it.
I grew up in a church that was of the opinion that healings and things like that only happened in the Bible and don’t happen today. So I’ve always been pretty skeptical of anyone even talking about healing. He was the one that made me see things differently.
The people pleaser in me is hesitant to post this blog, because personally, I feel like this story is crazy, like check me into somewhere because I’ve lost my mind crazy. But, I’m going to anyways because I feel like I need to. Its a bit of a struggle, torn between feelings.
I’m not entirely sure how to wrap this up either, I feel like I need to have some clever quote or lesson or something that I got out of that experience to make readers feel good, but I don’t have that. So, you’ll just have to take it as it is.
