Here I am again, the worst blogger-keeper-upper in existence. Since my last blog I have trekked the Himalayan Mountains to dance with, and bring the gospel to Nepali villages. I froze, and celebrated Christmas with my teammates, and experienced one of my favorite months on the race. That month changed my whole year. The next month in South Africa I fed and groomed horses, and cleaned their poop-ridden paddocks for hours. I got to know their exquisitely talented owner, Hilmary, and was changed by the way she lives her life. I baked bread and passed it out among the impoverished communities of Jeffreys Bay. It was astonishing how you could be in a quaint little surfer town, and five minutes behind your house you would be amongst the trash laden lands of a slum. It was an honor to be able to bring hands-on help to a hurting community.
We drove into Swaziland the next month, hoping to love on a country that has been riddled with HIV/AIDS. It is known as the orphan country. We worked at care points feeding, teaching, and loving on orphaned children. We visited hospitals and hospice centers in order to bring the hope of Jesus to someone in their most vulnerable moments. We were faced with death the whole month, and it changed us. It changed the way we saw life, and its little joys. Our ninth month in Molepolole, Botswana, consisted of driving out into the Kalahari Desert in hopes to share the great news of our great God. We killed and de-feathered our own chickens, saw millipedes the size of our feet, and shared the gospel of Jesus to families in huts. We sat in the sand, beneath trees, and I swear I could feel God in the wind. Our team also visited a men’s prison, encouraging and speaking with them. Some of our team even spearheaded a fundraiser and we were able to bring them Bibles at the end of the month.
Now we find ourselves in our tenth month in Bayankhongor, Mongolia. Ten months out of the country. Ten months without our friends and family. Ten months of transition, exhaustion, and constant travel. Ten months of slow days, and also those life-altering days. Ten months of joy and memories, and God-miracles. Ten months of adventure. Mongolia is wild. Flat lands stretch long and wide, uninterrupted until a range of small, snow-capped mountains breaks the rhythm. Sheep, cattle, horses, goats, and yaks roam the land, no doubt in search of grass to graze, and slowly making their way home. [It always, inevitably, makes me think of “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away…Let’s do some living after we die…” What is it about The Rolling Stones?? So good.] The people of Mongolia, with rosy cheeks and big smiles, they also roam their land. They are no doubt in search of something as well, something perceived as far off, but no farther than the skin on their bones. They too are trying to make their way home, and all I want to do is lead them down that road, to lead them home. I have found that all of humanity cries out all the time. The challenge for us is who will hear, then care, and then respond? It can get overwhelming, always asking God, “What can I do? How can I help?”
It is the very nature of Mongolia, its wild countryside, that has been an inspiration to me this month. Throughout the race, and especially recently, I have been struggling with that to do after the race. That’s just like me, always looking ahead, trying to also stay focused on the present. It has been plaguing me lately: what to do, where to live, where to take the next step of my life. And the big one: what is it that God has called me to do?
After everything that I have seen and witnessed, what am I going to do about it? But it is this month, in Mongolia, that I have learned that my calling is not what I do, but who I will be. What I do is simply a function, a responsibility, an outworking of my call. What I do is TOO SMALL. The call of God is much more about who I am called to be. What I do has to come out of who I am. I can’t let the roles of my life answer the question of who I am. It’s all about the process of who you are becoming, rather than what you’re doing.
So, like the land of Mongolia, like its audacious people, I will live a wild life. I will live a reckless life.
“…anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.”
John12:25 (The Message)
Reckless by definition: Marked by lack of proper caution; careless of consequences.
I’m ok with reckless.
This is who I want to be: someone who lives recklessly, wildly, loving without proper caution. Helping and leading, careless of the consequences. I want to do for one what I would do for the thousands. This is the calling.
As I write, we have 39 days left on the field. 39 days left with people that have become family. 39 days left to make a difference in Mongolia and China. 39 days left to soak up every moment. 39 days left to laugh, cry, dance, and remember all that God has done. The best, of this race and of this life, is yet to come.
Here’s to Mongolia, and all you wild ones, may we live and love recklessly.
