It’s 6:30 in the morning and my alarm goes off. It’s time to get up and start my day of ministry with a quick walk with the team and then devotion. I grab my toothbrush and a roll of toilet paper from the table in the church where we are sleeping, to head to the “long drop” toilet about 50 yards away.
I’m exhausted. I didn’t sleep well the night before – waking up frequently from being cold. My 4 layers of blankets and a sleeping bag just aren’t cutting it. My hips hurt from sleeping on my side on my air pad on the concrete floor for the past 2 and a half weeks. My knee is still swollen from all of the hiking we’ve been doing around to the surrounding villages, and my back is stiff from hauling rocks during afternoon grounds work.
I haven’t taken a shower in 4 days, because it’s been raining and cloudy and the solar panels haven’t seen enough sun to power the water pump.
“I need to wash my laundry,” I think to myself. But I’m not ready to face numb hands from hand washing them again in a large basin filled with ice cold water, pumped in directly from the mountain rivers.
I go to the kitchen in search of hot water for a cup of tea, where Matumela greets me with a smile and points to the kettle on the small 4 burner stove. “It’s not ready yet,” she says. So I go back to the church and climb back into my tent to get dressed for the day.
“Today is going to be a good day,” I try to tell myself as my eyes well up with tears. All I want to do is go back to bed.
I say a quick prayer, wipe my eyes and emerge from my tent.
This is the point every racer faces on their race. It typically happens somewhere between months 5 and 7, when the “honeymoon phase” is over and the reality that you still have almost as much time left on the race as you’ve already experienced. Mine was in the middle of month 6 in the winter mountains of Lesotho.
“I’m tired of being tired.”
“I want my bed, a hot shower, and a toilet that flushes.”
“I want a choice and control over what food gets put in front of me.”
“I want my clothes to smell clean – like they just came out of a washing machine and a dryer.”
“I want my own space, where I can break down and cry without everyone around me being able to hear me.”
“I want to be comfortable.”
It’s hard to explain this part of my experience to everyone back home. It’s so much easier to share the fun things we are blessed to see, do and experience while on the race and in ministry. I don’t want to share the things I struggle with for fear of seeming ungrateful.
But something the Lord hit me with during this month in Lesotho is how concerned I’ve been with seeking my own comfort and my attitude towards my circumstances.
The morale was running low for everyone and my raised up squad leader, Hayley, challenged our group with this…
“I want everyone to choose to serve at the expense of themselves for the sake of Jesus. Everything we have been complaining about are things our hosts live with regularly. They don’t get to leave in two weeks. They have to deal with the extreme weather and things being wet and muddy, no water, no power, no Wi-Fi. But they choose it for the sake of the Gospel.
They are walking in obedience and don’t consider themselves suffering even though it is hard. Don’t give up and miss out on what the Lord has for you… but also don’t approach it in such a way that it is at the expense of the ministry right in front of us.”
Wow. Everything she said was so on point. It was fresh revelation. It was everything I was feeling but didn’t know how to express.
It was the truth.
I signed up for the race to whole-heartedly pursue the Lord and to humbly serve those around me, but as the months go by and start to wear on me, I still have to choose to buy in and say “Yes.” Even at the expense of my own comforts.
I must realize that when I do receive things that make me comfortable, they are blessings and not things that I am immediately entitled to.
I told my friends, family, and supporters that I wanted to do the World Race to abandon those comforts. To not just see how others lived, but to meet them in those places and live as they do.
To help the women in the villages cook a Lesotho meal from scratch that takes over an hour to prepare bent over a wood fire and come home smelling of smoke. To walk a half a mile to fill up a bucket of water from a well. To push through the pain and cold ache in my hands to help another women finish laundry for a family who just lost a loved one. To get my hands and feet dirty playing with the kids in the mud. To sleep on the floor like every person in these villages does.
But most importantly to do all of these things while still having the attitude that I am not suffering. This is a sacrifice, yes, but it is an honor to serve the Lord in this way and I am not suffering.
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss
of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…
Philippians 3:7-8
There is freedom in doing all of these things with a joyful heart. (James 1:2-3)
I must remember to continually surrender to the Lord and seek His will and desires for me in these moments and not my own.
My commitment to myself, the Lord, and to all those who are supporting me back home is to say yes every day; to seek out the opportunities that would otherwise seem hard.
I will get in the dirt to sit with the man who everyone else passes by.
I will run around in the heat to kick a ball around with the children trying to sell me something, who just need to be treated like kids.
I will pick up a bucket and walk to the well to spend time with the woman who goes daily for her family.
I will continue to press in even when it gets hard, at the expense of comfort, because that is what I’ve committed to for this year.
It is what we as Christians are called to commit our entire lives to in order to see the Kingdom of God here on earth.
