When you apply nobody really tells you this, and you won’t find it on the world Race instagram, and it is only hinted at during training camp by the vague phrase “the b zone”. Real Talk. The race sucks sometimes.
Honestly, in the last week, it has been hot and muggy. I got called a “stupid foreigner” every day at my ministry by people who thought I couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying. I got hit by a moto, so I had to pay all my carefully-allotted budget for the month to cover the repairs and my hospital bills. Because of the accident, I have a contused collarbone and random bruises and scrapes all over my body. It hurts to move. Most of the girls on the squad have lice. Ministry is over, and most of the squad gets to go to AC and beds in the company of their wonderful parents for PVT, who will give them all sorts of nice things, while I stay back and pick up trash off the streets.Yaay! My insurance claim from the time I was hospitalized in Thailand was denied. I’m 4,801 dollars away from being fully funded, have no idea how to fundraise, and have no idea when I’ll be sent home for not being fully funded. I don’t really know what I’m going to do with my life after the race. I’m going to miss the wonderful people here at Battambang that I’ve built relationships with, and am assigned to ministry at a pig farm next month. And it’s hot. And muggy. Very muggy. And it hurts to move
Now, reading over my list of complaints has me playing the world’s smallest violin for myself, because, honestly, they’re really petty. Firstly, on the grand scale of things, they don’t really matter; they’re not issues of life or death that will affect all history, they’re small issues that affect a single season of a single life. Secondly, so what if life sucks sometimes? God does not owe anyone an easy life. If anything, we are deservant of wrath, but in God’s mercy, he gives us the blessings of rain and love and sunrises, which we have not properly marvelled at, but have greedily grasped as our birthright, and then ask for more, as the selfish toddlers we are. I still have life and breath, and thought, so I should be grateful and not angry at God for all his blessings. Because, at the end of the day, we are not entitled to an easy life, specially if we are followers of Jesus.
Jesus didn’t say “pick up a basket of daisies and follow me”, He calls us to die and follow Him whether or not the terrain is easy, specially when the terrain is hard and climbing the mountains numbs our hands with the cold. And, the funny thing is, I’ve found that when life just sucks, I am more reliant on God. As C.S. Lewis writes, in The Problem of Pain “pain is God’s megaphone”, he uses it to talk to us when a normal life won’t let us hear him. So, sometimes, even on the race, being obedient hurts and life just sucks.
However, a sacrifice of praise is only a sacrifice if it hurts, choosing joy only happens when you actually have to choose joy, and “crucifying the flesh” is not just a metaphor, there is an actual excruciating process going on within me at the moment where I am being passed through metaphorical fire as part of the ongoing process of sanctification. And guess what? Fire burns and stings, and it’s unpleasant, and it’s hot, and muggy, and it hurts to move afterwards, but I know that when this, too passes, I shall be refined like gold and a little bit more like Christ.
