I have decided to write a blog series containing multiple chapters of short stories. I am happy to say here is my first post.
Preface
I maxed out the plans I had for myself at the age of 29 years old. I finished high school, went to college, studied abroad, traveled abroad, taught abroad, got my first job right away, got my dream job shortly after. Then God said, are you ready to move on now?
“I want to make you interruptible.”
I spend most days on the Race waking up to see if this will be the day when God makes my path clear: go back to what I love and am good at – teaching French; or, run towards something challenging, difficult and unsure. Always searching for an indication of “The BIG Plan”. Well, the clock is ticking and I still don’t have an answer.
But because God is more creative than me, He is asking me to wake up in the mornings with an entirely different agenda. Being interruptible. Because the things I desire to leave out of my plan are the very things He has put into His plan for me. This series is about intentional interruptibility and the lessons God is teaching me in these unexpected moments and unpredictable encounters.
Chapter 1: Patrick
We’d had pretty good luck with our laundry situation up until this point. Rare were the moments when all 12 pairs of underwear were dirty. Hand washing buckets and a volley ball net in Serbia, weekly use of the washing machine in Romania, unlimited use of the machine in Bulgaria- I’d been a very spoiled Racer. Yet here I was after a trip to Greece and back, a night in Bulgaria, some very long travel days, and jam packed ministry days since arriving in Malaysia with nothing left to wear.
Madison and Alexis had left, leaving behind decent directions to the laundry mat. “We won’t be far behind, see you soon.” Erica and I packed up our stuff, grabbed our rain jackets and headed downstairs. The members of the church had locked the gate on their way out. We were locked in.
“Do you have the keys?”
“No are you sure you don’t have them either?”
We looked. But in all honestly we didn’t look that hard. Not as hard as we should have been for our only set of keys to someone else’s church.
”Maybe Madison and Alexis have them”
”I don’t know why they would, but maybe”
We walked back upstairs and I distinctly remember thinking to myself: I guess God doesn’t want me to do my laundry right now, guess I‘ll take a nap.
This kind of peace wasn’t normal. My brain normally would have been thinking: Oh my goodness we’re locked into a building and our friends are potentially locked out. What if there’s a fire?? What if we have to tell our ministry host we’ve lost the keys? And now I’m not going to have any clean clothes for tomorrow.
Instead I passed out on my bed into coma like sleep.
I woke up a 5-minute-long hour later to the sound of jingling keys.
It was the kind of sleep where your mind wakes up briefly, realizes your body sort of feels like it’s trapped in quicksand and you manage to move air from lungs to lips to gasp:”10 more minutes?”
Erica let me sleep longer than that, but at some point I heard her say we should probably go. We’d had the keys all along. She’d had the idea to check somewhere new while journaling. I dragged myself out of bed and across the city.
Our laundry had been in the machine about 15 minutes when a man (the owner) came in and mentioned the free Wifi.
He stopped and gave us a look, we could tell he was mentally trying to figure out how two clearly non Asian 20 something year olds had ended up in his place of business.
“Are you tourists or teachers?“
We must choose our words carefully here. Erica and I looked at each other as if we were searching for the right words in each other’s mingled expressions of uncertainty.
”Neither, we’re working with an Anglican Church”
”Ohh with Pastor Chan?“
“Yes do you know him?”
”Yeah but I go to the Baptist Church next door. Our reading room program just finished but there’s some people left that go to our church if you want to see our reading room and meet them”.
This is a Muslim state. Christians here are few and far between. You don’t run into them like this unless God has planned it.
We followed and met 4 other church members. They shared all about their reading room. How the English language has deteriorated in their country since Malaysia got it’s independence. How they started a reading room to make English fun for kids and to begin reaching out and serving the community as a church. How the first 2 years they only had 5 kids who would come because people wouldn’t associate with a church and now 4 years since they began they are becoming overwhelmed with numbers. We told them about the Race, we ended up getting a ride back to our building once our laundry was finished, by the owner, his name was Patrick.
Lesson learned Lord.
It was a beautifully orchestrated moment where God interrupted my life for the shear sake of inviting me in to see what He’s been working on- like a friend that invites me into their home so they can show me their newly painted bedroom, or their freshly organized closet. I wasn’t called to witness to anyone, build anyone up, or even share the Gospel . Sometimes the Lord interrupts our lives so He can show us the Kingdom He’s been building. Because without that interruption, I never would have known just how much of the Kingdom was there.
