What do I see when I look into the mirror?
Well, right now I probably wouldn’t look for too long. Sometimes I shudder at the greasy, untamed hair, the face that is totally broken out, and the dark bags under my eye. This is what I see after every travel day, and even sometimes in between.
But if I get past that and look a little longer, past the unpleasant-to-the-eye exterior that was destroyed by the World Race, I see something different…
I see a girl who…
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At this point in writing I stopped. I didn’t know what words to put into the page. My mind was blank.
I knew there was something different about me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I couldn’t put it into words.
After sitting there for a couple of minutes with an empty mind I gave up. I shut my journal, showered, and headed downstairs for the Tuesday night bible study they do here at BYKOTA House. After we worshipped for a bit, Micah, one of our contacts, told us to open our Bible to Matthew 5:14. I quickly opened it and started reading…secretly hoping to find the answer in these verses; an answer to a question that I didn’t even know. I got disappointed rather quickly as I read about how we should not hide our light and that we should let it shine.
“Yea, Yea, God, I know this.”
My eyes then floated above verse 14 to the one just above it. Verse 13.
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.”
That’s it. I lost my saltiness. Yes, a little silly sounding, I know, but at some point in the last couple of weeks I decided that I was done with this whole “World Race” thing. I was done growing. I was done with this community, and I just wanted to get home so I could start the next, new, exciting chapter of my life.
At first it wasn’t as harsh as it sounds now. I took care of a pretty big issue I had last month, but I thought that I was done. I thought that it was the last thing I had to “take care of” before heading home.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Stay present!” in the past 5 weeks or so, but I don’t think that being present here is the issue here. I consider myself to be an “in the moment” kind of girl. I just didn’t want to challenge myself. I didn’t want to work anymore.
John 15:2 says:
“Every branch in me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit.”
Our contact last month, Emmi, gave me chapter 15 and I think it’s a passage that the Lord wants me to hold near.
The pruning process is constant. You can try to put things aside and “save them for later”, but God will never stop perusing you and presenting it to you. You’ll just exhaust yourself from running away from it.
The pruning process is sometimes a challenge, and sometimes God gives us a choice in that challenge. You can choose not to take it…but you’ll lose your saltiness….and God’s Word tells us what unsalty salt is good for.
Or you can do it, and if you don’t know what “it” is, then ask Him. He’ll show you.
And that, my friends, is where I’m at.
I have a choice. I can be content with my growth so far and opted out of the growth God desires for me, but not have the impact He wants me to have.
Or I can challenge myself. I can be dissatisfied with the place of contentment and I can do those things that He desires for me.
Sitting here waiting for the World Race to end would be easy, but I decided to go on the not-so-easy path when I left on January 8th.
His pruning process is never going to stop. It’s going to hurt sometimes because the things He has to clip are bigger than others.
I have to stop running away from it. I have to challenge myself.
I never want to be with content with where I am. And neither does He.
And maybe when that challenge is over I can look in the mirror and be sure that I’m not running away.
