This is the story of a girl who quit the World Race.
Even as I say it, what little is left of my pride trembles.
I have been home
8 days today, and still my mind is having trouble wrapping itself around
that fact. I am sitting on a bed, not a sleeping mat. There is a fire blazing
in the fireplace, not to cook over but to provide a nice look and smell to my
already warm home. I’m not covered in mosquito bites; I’m not sweating
profusely. My stomach is full from a recognizable breakfast and I’m not really
thinking about lunch yet because I know without a doubt that I’ll have
something edible as soon as I desire it.
How things can change in 8 days.
One month ago
today my journey on the World Race took a turn that I would have never expected
it to take. That turn came in the form of a whisper:
Marlena, why are you here?
I was sitting
alone in a cluster of trees at a bike park near the base of Kuala Lumpur’s Twin
Towers, when my calm was interrupted in such a way that sent me immediately
into sobs. The question wasn’t sarcastic, wasn’t harsh, wasn’t accusatory;
rather it was a gentle moving within my Spirit, probing me to search the depths
of my own heart.
I prayed for a
few minutes, silently going over in my head why what I was doing was entirely
biblical, good, and what a Christian should be doing. I wrote off the whisper
as a twinge of homesickness, resolved my heart, and left praying this prayer:
God, I WANT to be here. This
is my dream, and I intend to live fully in it. If this is homesickness, remove
it. I can’t imagine anywhere else in the world I’d rather be right now than
here. I miss my family and friends, but nothing is too much to leave behind in
light of Your glory.
We left Malaysia
the next day for Thailand, and I was content with my little heart dialogue. I
knew where I wanted to be, and I was satisfied being there. A week passed, and
as R-Squad threw ourselves into prostitute ministry in Phuket I was so joyful.
The whisper nagged at me a little, but I dismissed it with proof of my happiness.
That was until a week later, when a whisper came again in yet another time of
prayer:
Are you here because I want
you here, or because it’s where you want to be?
This time I was
more somber in how I responded, realizing for the first time that maybe I
needed to take more seriously this call to examine my heart and listen for
God’s voice.
The three weeks
that followed were some of the most (if not the most) intense times I’ve ever
spent in prayer. I felt like David in Psalms 22, “poured out like water” before
the Lord, beseeching Him to search my heart and uncover its motives, to reveal
Himself to me in unmistakable ways. It wasn’t long before I sensed what the
Lord was asking me to do, but every fiber of my heart and being fought in
opposition.
I fasted, I
prayed, I sat in silence, I cried. I begged and pleaded and fought harder than
I think I’ve fought for anything in my life. My heart was with my team, was
with the life and community I had created on the World Race, but slowly God was
turning my heart towards home. And it was taking all that was in me to resist.
As with any major
decision, people tend to take sides. Some people told me I was right. Some
people told me I was wrong. Others simply told me to listen to God’s voice,
knowing that He would speak clearly in His time. For those of you that know me,
I am a born people-pleaser. Nothing brings me more happiness than knowing that
people around me are happy and pleased with the choices I am making. So much of
my confidence rests in the approval others show me in my life choices. So when
God presented me with a decision that was opposed, I went through every
possible avenue to prove to myself that I was wrong and that others were right.
I remember
sitting on the balcony one night during squad worship, watching a thunderstorm
roll in that very clearly reflected the tumult of my emotions. I was angry, and
I told God that this was my dream life and that I wouldn’t leave my team,
wouldn’t leave my squad, wouldn’t leave the World Race unless He spoke very
clearly right in that moment.
Two seconds later
one of my squad-mates sat down next to me.
She said,
“Marlena, I don’t know why, but I feel like God is asking me to share this with
you.” She continued on, telling me of a situation she had experienced in the
last month where she had wanted to do one thing, but God was clearly speaking
to her heart to do another. There was a choice involved, one that involved a
sacrifice of her “dream” to pursue something that didn’t really make sense at
the time. The people around her were telling her that she could do what she
wanted, that the choice was hers, but she knew deep down in her Spirit what the
Lord was asking her to do. And at the end over her story, she said these words
to me:
Marlena, what it came down to
was obedience. It didn’t make sense, and it wasn’t what I wanted, but in the
end it was a choice to obey.
Believe it or
not, even after receiving this word so directly after I had asked for it, I
still didn’t cave. What my squad-mate said to me resonated all the way down to
the core of my being, but my grasp was still so tight around what I wanted and the
desire for approval. The biggest fear that gripped my heart was, What will people think of me? What will my
team think? My squad? My supporters back home?
After 3 long
weeks my point of surrender finally came, not with fire and lightning and wind
and rain, but with the still whisper of God through His Word. In Malaysia I had
been given a Scripture, long before the thought of leaving had ever crossed my
mind, though my understanding of it had been clouded. But as I received that
Scripture over and over again from different sources throughout my time in
Thailand, I began to meditate on it more until one day the light bulb finally
switched on. The passage from Jeremiah 17 said,
“Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who
depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
He
will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it
comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land
where no one lives.
“But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a
tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does
not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a
year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
In that moment of understanding I knew the Lord was asking me to stop
depending so much on what others thought of me and to simply place my trust in
confidence in Him and what He was asking me to do. It was as simple as that,
and as soon as I laid down my desires-the desire to stay right where I was, the
desire to please people, the desire to have control-God gave me the strength to
make the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make:
to leave the
World Race and come home.
So here I am, not really sure of my purpose here yet, but joyfully
expectant and full of peace that I am walking in the abundant life God has
called me to. I miss my squad, I miss my team, and I miss the lifestyle of the
World Race, but I am stepping into a new season of obedience and trust, even
when things don’t make sense. God has a plan for my life, He’s had it from the
very beginning, and I’m excited as I enter into it with a new level of
abandonment and faith that I have learned through trusting Him.
God is good, all
the time
All the time,
God is good.
AMEN.
To my supporters: Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for all that
you sacrificially gave to equip me and send me out on this journey. May God
show you fully one day all the lives that were touched by your choice to
surrender. You have been blessing upon blessing in my own life, and I am
forever grateful.
This blog will
be closed on the 17th of this month, but if you would like to
continue following my journey, check out my new blog (soon to be launched) at:
http://joyinthemiddle.tumblr.com/
the way you have so abundantly blessed me.
