So as God would have it, the day after I wrote THIS blog, I got tested in depth again… the very next day. (Warning: this one is much uglier than the first one.)
As a bit of background: my team is paired with my dream team this month. We are split up between two houses that work for the rehabilitation of addiction; a house for boys and a house for girls. There are around 10 people in each house ranging from 13-24, most of them 15-17. We don’t know their stories, we aren’t here to know them, were just here to love them and do what we can to make their house more beautiful. In the mornings we sand, paint, clean, etc. and in the afternoons we get to play soccer, teach card games, make bracelets, teach a ballet class, basically whatever we want to teach them or what they want to learn. These are beautiful days but long days, usually between 8 and 10 hours. Considering a lot of the Race has been months of 2-6 hours of daily ministry, this has been an adjustment. Furthermore, if there’s a house that doesn’t get a break, has to stay later, has more work to do, or has a crisis befall it, it’s girls house. Guess which house I’m in.
My sweet team leaders have tried to alleviate the load a little bit by giving us a half day once a week to process, journal, rest, do laundry, etc., but there’s a thing nobody could really take into account: altitude. We’re at 13,000 feet. It’s the highest metropolitan city in the world. I’ve adjusted fine; a headache the first day or two and I was golden. Over half my team has been sick, and sick for days, leaving the entire load of the heaviness and the work to fall on me and two other healthy teammates… day in and day out. I was really understanding the first few days, but when it drags on and on and you’re worn out and missing your off time because of other people who need to stay home… that gets old. This is a story about one of those days.
Literally the day after I wrote the Part One blog (link above), one of these situations happened. I was exhausted. I was carrying the weight of trying to get the paint to look professional amidst having a bunch of definitely-not-professional painters doing the work, my heart was heavy for these girls, I’d been coming home after these long days and cooking for the team, having long team times, and just going to bed late and waking up exhausted. On top of it I’d been waking up with a sense of dread, something that definitely wasn’t of me. It was a heaviness where I’d snap awake wishing to be anywhere doing anything else, and anyone who knows me and knows I was made to do this knows I don’t want to be anywhere BUT El Alto, Bolivia with these girls. What had gotten me out of bed both Wednesday and Thursday was the thought that Thursday afternoon I could finally sit and journal all the heaviness without stuffing it back down and “pasting on the happy face” again. When the morning came I was elated. I needed this… I whispered climbing out of bed, “I can’t wait for this afternoon. I get to rest this afternoon.” And I felt God whisper “yeah, right.” I chose to ignore that.
Sure enough, the afternoon came. There are eight of us on the girls house team, three have to be at the house at all times. Three were sick, that leaves four possible options so I can get my “halfternoon.” My team leader had stayed home sick that morning but had expected to go in the afternoon; she was still sick. Two were already going, and the other who was supposed to go decided she needed to get an expense report done before the weekend… leaving me to fill in. Again.
At this point I’m physically exhausted, mentally done, spiritually wiped from trying to process all this heaviness, and tired of fighting the soreness of the division of labor falling so squarely on my shoulders “when I’d well deserved some rest by now.” We had a 45 minute break before I had to go back and I went upstairs, sat down in front of this gorgeous view of the mountain from the top floor, and cried. All the feeling like I was one of the only ones who cared for these girls, still wanted to be here, wasn’t trying to cop out of work all the time, and just emotion, mental, and physical exhaustion, spilled out in an ocean of tears. I was done. I had nothing else. Shoot, I had nothing else when two days ago what got me out of bed was getting to rest and process in two days, and it got taken from me. What I needed to be healthy was time to rest and process. And somewhere in the sobbing I realized: what is depth if all I have to pour out is myself? What is depth if I’m not having to push deeper and find the strength in Him to keep going when I’m this done? Not depth, that’s for sure. It sounds an awful lot like “doing it in my own strength.”
One of my personal heroes, Kayla Zilch, wrote THIS blog that touched me really deeply about introversion and extroversion and not being defined by your personality type. She says some people are an Olympic pool, some people are a kiddie pool. How dare those with an Olympic pool try to take their fulfillment out of my kiddie pool, because that’s all I’ve got for the whole day. I’d been running on empty in the kiddie pool for days now. Isn’t it about time SOMEBODY recognize what I’ve been pouring out and the fact that if I say the words “I need something” I’ve been needing it for a while before I said anything?? Well, I talked to my Mama about this blog when I lived in PA (low key self righteously thinking I was explaining how I operate and that she would understand me better) and standing in the kitchen making Mongolian beef she looks at me and goes, “except that we’re not a pool, we’re a river.” And goes back to flouring the beef. That moment flashed back into my mind that day, crying on the top floor, and it was one of those moments where I realized all the things that had been tormenting me (exhaustion, pulling the extra load, the spiritual heaviness) was actually an answer to prayer.
Disclaimer: it’s ok to speak out for what you need. It’s ok to be upset at people choosing out and finding excuses out of serving when that’s what we’re here for. It’s ok to need rest and hurt when people don’t seem to care about something that touches your heart deeply. But when you get your eyes off of those things you find your people that feel the same way you do; like my squad leader, Josey, who came over in my mess, empathized with me about his heart for the boy’s house, then just let me be. I needed that. But the real breakthrough came when I realized all these uncomfortable things were actually the answer to my prayer, which is when my prayer changed. I found myself saying,
“I want You more than depth. You fill me, not depth. I still want depth, but I want You more. Let that be what this pushes me to.”
All my focus on depth had made me miss both the things that pushed me to it and the One who was pushing me there in the first place. I saw all the depth-creating factors as inconveniences and missed the purpose of the depth creating; the Hand and not the Heart. So up there on the top floor staring at the stinkin mountain sobbing my eyes out, I stepped back into the river. I went back that afternoon full of life and joy, and without my eyes not on the inconveniences – or even the depth – but on the Life-Giver. It was a good lesson, and one that keeps coming back when I’m tired, we have to stay late again, or when it’s just me and the faithful 3 or 4 going back to ministry each day. Those things don’t matter as much when they’re not only proof your prayer is being answered but you can see His heart in them.
So I ask you, what in your life that you see as pain or inconvenience is actually an answer to something you’ve been praying for? What if that’s what the Father is trying to use to draw you a little closer and make you look to Him to find the strength you need? It’s there, I promise. He’s just waiting to give it to you, and draw you a little deeper in the process. Another guarantee: you’ll find it if you aren’t trying to numb the pain all the time, but that’s another blog for another day. 😉
