Hello all!
For reasons I will discuss in the future, this has been- and will be- a fairly low volume blog month for me. In the mean time, I hope you will enjoy this previously unposted story from our final weekend in Colombia.
Also, I am only $4,498 from being fully funded! We are fasting and praying as a squad for the last few people who are still fundraising on May 16. I invite you to join us in our fast and consider supporting my teammates or myself financially.
Thanks, as always, and God bless.
– Sean
As I write, it is 11:27 at night and I am on a bus from Medellin to Bogota, Colombia. I leave for Greece to work in a refugee camp in a few days. Many of our teammates are asleep, while a few are still watching movies or listening to something on their earbuds.
This is my favorite part of travel days. I’ve always been a night owl, and I derive great contentment from the tranquility of the night and being the only one awake; in some ways, it is the closest thing to being home that I get on the race. Unadulterated time to be to myself and do whatever: read a book, watch a movie, or write. It is, admittedly, much harder to raid the fridge for leftovers.
Sitting next to me is my dear friend Megan. Megan and I like to travel together. Though she is rapidly making the downward spiral into sleep -we already agreed that she would probably fall asleep on me at some point, and that was okay- we have already recapped the month, talked about “all the things” as she says, and watched most of the third X-Men movie.
As is often the case, I had no notion when we met that we would become friends. Yet here we are, two friends traveling the world together on separate teams, catching up on the jaunts between countries and sharing in how God is stretching, shaping, and moulding us. This is, in a very nearly literal sense, an act of God. This is not how either of us do life.
I’ve read lots of other racers’ blogs, and read about what control has looked like for them. For some it was a matter of controlling others in their relationships; others were afraid of letting people get close emotionally, so one night stands were-
TWO DAYS LATER…
Pardon the abrupt ending. I believe that the next part of that sentence was “the norm,” but I don’t really remember. About that time as I was writing, Megan said,”I think I’m going to be sick,” and almost instantaneously threw up. All. Over. I was lucky enough to escape the deluge because I had time to stand up to let her out, but my poor bag didn’t make out so lucky. I was so grateful when the cop asked about our passports the next day that he didn’t make me get it out: my fanny pack (which Megan and I agreed was beyond saving) was still covered with puke from the night before. I’m pretty sure I would have been arrested.
As my dear friend sat seemingly stupefied by what had happened, those of us around her stepped into action. It was never a question of her doing clean up; we were on it. Within minutes, we’d secured for her a change of clothes, a clean seat for her to sit in, and enough wet wipes to sufficiently clean the blast radius. While I confess that I was particularly concerned that my Kindle might be marinating in Megan’s last meal, I was struck by something I found altogether disconcerting. It was easy. I have smelled- and touched and seen- things a lot worse than a little puke. Yes, I wasn’t overjoyed that my backpack was now being used as an emesis bucket, but my priority was to get Megan out of her seat, into some clean clothes, and get the whole mess cleaned up so she -and everyone else- could go back to sleep.
As I stretched out under the seat to make sure we’d gotten all the little splatters, the thought occurred to me, “Lord, I want to love everyone this way, not just the people who are close to me.” Because I didn’t mind the puke, and I didn’t mind the smell, and I didn’t mind the mess. I just wanted to take care of my buddy. And in the moment, I realized that my capacity to love others and the extent to which I do it don’t always matc.
Fast forward two days, when we went out as a squad and prayed for God to lead us to the people who needed him. By the end of it, a homeless man with an infected, bleeding leg and poor hygiene had exposed himself to our team of three, gotten partially dried blood on me (several times), and practically sat in my lap while he poked his leg with his dirty bamboo skewer. The craziness -literal and metaphorical- was enough to push me to the limits of my comfort zone! and it wasn’t exactly my first rodeo.
Now, I can make the case either way for severe mental illness or demon possession, depending on what direction you want to take it (and we prayed for both while I secretly wondered if Colombia even had COBRA laws.) Regardless of causation, the result was that while we were able to make some connection with him and give him some food and water, we were not able to help him to the extent that we would have liked to.
When I came back to the hostel, I felt deflated, like a failure. Hadn’t I done all that God asked? Had I not done things “correctly”? I went to my Friend with my sadness and my defeat. He brought me back to my prayer from earlier in the week.
When I prayed to love people like I love my friend Megan, did I think it would be easy? We loved her in her vomit. I believe God’s purpose was not to heal him that day, but to show me his pain (and His pain) so I would understand the spiritual angst that drives a man to fast and pray for his lost brother.
I did what God asked, and my job is obedience, not results. God is in charge of results, not me. I am a servant. My job is to love to the best of my ability, and where I fail, lean on God to give me the ability when I don’t feel loving. The man was ostracized, alone, and afraid, and we fought to get through the layers of confusion, pain, and fear to connect and show love. Sometimes that has to be enough, and I learned again the lesson that I won’t always have the answers. Just love.
