“It is either going to be completely dry or completely muddy.” This is the advice we were given when discussing what shoes to wear to a home visit in the outskirts of the jungle. The weather here is just as unpredictable as Bellingham, so I knew to choose the boots and grab my rain jacket.
As soon as all eleven of us hopped out of the SUV and began the hike to the family’s home, it began to rain. This is not just your typical sprinkle; it is a torrential downpour; my absolute favorite kind of rain. We slipped and slid in the mud on the path as we made our way to their home. When we finally arrived, we stood under a handmade stick and tarp shelter. As I looked around at the small one-bedroom cluster of homes built with just two-by-fours, the buckets sitting outside collecting rain water, and the elderly we were about to pray over, I reached into my pocket for my phone. But it was not there. For an unusually long moment, I was upset about it.
I was not afraid I had lost my phone; I knew exactly where it was at the house. But this would have been the picture perfect moment on the Race for the photo to be re-posted by Adventures in Missions on their social media outlets. It has been a dream of mine to have my photos re-posted either on Facebook or Instagram. The World Race and Adventures in Missions re-post photos almost daily and they are always stunning, and they always have the most beautiful captions.
So as I stood there, looking at all of these things, my thoughts before I reached for my phone were consumed with potential caption ideas for the photo I envisioned. In the moment of being completely upset about not having my phone for such an Instagram worthy post, I realized for the entire Race I have been seeing things through the filter of “Is this Instagram worthy? Is this a photo the World Race would repost?”
For eight and a half months, I have lived with this filter on. To be completely honest, I feel regret about how I have lived on the Race. I have had so many incredible opportunities on three different continents to do life with people I will probably never see again. In Albania, I sat in the homes of the elderly Roma women and heard their life stories. In Greece, I made meals for the refugees who passed through our camp on their way to freedom. In Swaziland, I loved on children at local care points who were rarely held or shown affection. In Colombia, I lived with an amazing host family who did nothing but spoil us.
In a matter of moments, I think I questioned my whole life. Literally, everything.
What would it look like if we stopped living life through the filter of social media? What would it look like if we stopped caring how many likes we get on photos and how many followers we have on our social media platforms? What would it look like if we did not check our phone twenty million times a day? There are people around the world who have not been hugged or told they are loved in weeks. There are people around the world who have never even held a form of technology.
Why do we, as Americans, pride ourselves on the size of our house? Or how our homes are decorated? Or the job we have? Or the salary we make? Or the clothes we wear? There are entire families, sometimes multi-generational, around the world who sleep, live, and cook in one tiny room.
There are children who walk miles and miles to school every day or to get one hot meal at a care point. There are men and women who walk miles and miles for work and for food. They walk in 100+ degree weather with no shade, in torrential downpour on slippery rocks and in deep mud, over sketchy wild bridges to cross rivers, up and down very steep unsafe trails, and in every other terrain you can imagine. There are young children who wear the same torn up shirt for days in a row because they do not have another. There are young women who have to hide in their homes once they reach preteen age because otherwise they will be kidnapped into prostitution or forced into marriage.
These are just some of the realities in the small handful of countries I have been to. This one “unfiltered” day in the outskirts of the jungle has made me question how I want to live my life when I get home. I know there will be temptation to fall back into an easy lifestyle of comfort, of the life I lived before the Race. But I do not want to stumble when the jungle taught me how to see the world like Jesus does.
How can YOU love more like Jesus did?
How can YOU see the world around you through the eyes of Jesus?
How can YOU live an unfiltered life?
While I did not have my phone, my teammate did. He snapped these photos of the wild bridge we crossed in the outskirts of the jungle.
