This whole past week has been a rollercoaster in the absolute best way. I’ve experienced a few of my new favorite memories on the Race, the highest of highs, and I also experienced some completely unexpected and so difficult to swallow lows. I don’t know how to describe this week (and one day in particular of it) other than saying it was a lot like real life, and it was the perfect example of life on the World Race. If you’ve read any of my blogs, you know by now that life on the Race, *my* life on the Race in particular, is anything but perfect. These are some of the best moments of my life. And these are some of the hardest. If I’ve ever had a week of my life worth writing about, however, it was this one. Allow me to invite you into my heart and mind to show what the Lord is doing, because believe me it’s worth telling.
On Monday, I had a rest day where I spent a few hours at a coffee shop eating French fries, soaking up the high speed WiFi, and feeling like an American for the first time in a long time. To be completely honest, this month in Cambodia in particular, rest days have been some of my favorite. I absolutely love our ministry this month, we are working with a wonderfully, loving, kind, so generous, and welcoming pastor and his wife that have planted several churches in the Philippines, Thailand, and now Cambodia. Working with a church, our ministry days have been very long, we’re nearly at the halfway point of the Race, the weather here is almost always in the mid-upper 90’s with 80% humidity…All of these combined leave all too often exhausted and drained World Racers. I’ve pushed myself to never wish away my time on the Race or my time in any country. But this month has been the hardest stretch on that vow I made, as I’ve found myself often craving next week’s rest day before the current one has even ended. I’ve been on the mission field, traveling, adjusting, serving, and being “on” for five months now and it’s definitely begun to show. All that to say, ministry days are the best days and obviously what we’re here for, but rest days are equally great days.
During my Sabbath rest, the Lord gave me the words “Haircuts & Heartbreak” for my week ahead, my last week of ministry in Cambodia before we leave for Albania next week. This sounded like a blog title, so I jotted it down to remember it, not fully understanding what or where exactly He was leading me.
On Wednesday we had an amazing opportunity to put on a beauty day for women in a village outside the city of Siem Reap, where the church we have been working with often serves and does outreach. My lovely new teammate Karlie is planning on going to cosmetology school after the Race, so I have been teaching her how to cut hair the last few weeks. Between the two of us, Karlie and I were able to cut about twenty women’s hair, while the rest of our team shampooed hair, painted nails, and attempted to carry on conversations with the women between the language barrier and only one translator. This was probably my favorite day of ministry all month. It was such a privilege to be able to bless these women with something so seemingly small as a free haircut. In Asia and in Cambodia especially, Buddhism has a long history and heavy influence. Not unlike lukewarm Christians in the States, most people consider themselves Buddhist but if asked specific questions, they aren’t completely sure of what they believe. Sharing the Gospel can be difficult here for people who have never heard the name Jesus in their lives, and who were raised on traditions and a religion that dates back in their families to ancient times. The church we are working with does a lot of door-to-door evangelism and community outreach, but this past Wednesday was something different. It was showing the love of Jesus through service, through making hardworking women, mothers, and grandmothers feel beautiful and worthy. That’s the heart of Jesus and I am so honored to have been a part of it.
On Thursday and Friday morning, we had another great opportunity to teach English at an elementary school. On the Race, we are often given vague descriptions of ministry and sometimes show up the day of not exactly sure what we’re getting ourselves into. Thursday was a great example of that. We arrived at the school, were split into three different classrooms, and basically given the reigns and told to teach English for the next two hours. My teammates Ashley, Meagan, and I were sent to the kindergarten classroom and told they were working on the English alphabet. The teacher then sat down and waited for us to start. Language barriers are almost always difficult, but especially when trying to teach English to 5-6 year olds who’s previous knowledge basically begins and ends with “A is for apple!” Needless to say, I left the school that day with a sore throat from singing every nursery rhyme in the book our brains could remember, trying anything to teach the kids basic English phrases in a way they could understand.
On both Thursday and Friday afternoon, we went to a nearby church pastored by a friend of our host and helped with their children’s program. On Friday, the pastor of this church took us on a walk through their village to see some of the homes and meet the families of the children in their church. The “heartbreak” in this post’s title came in such an unexpected way that nearly knocked me off my feet. During our walk through the village, Pastor Kim told us the father of a young man who helped us with the kids the day before, had passed away that morning. He told us it would be a great encouragement to him if we could visit his grieving family and show our respect.
We heard the sobbing and screaming down the street before we could even see the house. My feet stopped on the red dirt, frozen, everything in me resisting my brain’s command to walk inside the home. I didn’t have to walk inside to know what was happening. From outside their fence, I could barely see Makara, the young man we met the day before, and his siblings crowded around their mother. A wife and a mother physically sobbing over the body of her husband. Her grief, heartbreak, and disbelief manifesting from her mouth in the form of gutwrenching sobs. I did not want to walk inside. No thank you, God. This is too much. This is where I draw the line. Then the pastor encouraged us to follow him inside.
Grief is a beautiful, terrible thing that takes the breath from your lungs and turns your world upside down. Everyone experiences it differently. Some in anger, some in denial, some in desperation. From the outside, some may have said this family felt it in hopelessness. My teammates and I walked inside their home, circled around Makara, his brother, and his mother as they sat beside their father’s body on the table. At first, I wanted to run. After five months on the Race, I’ve lately been struggling to understand how God can be good in all things. Knowing the fragility of my current mind and heart, in that moment of hearing the heartbreaking sobs of this family and standing over the body of their father, I feared it would push me over the edge. I was scared of my own emotional reaction. I saw hopelessness. For a moment, I even felt it for them. But then I felt something else: the Lord’s peace. The pastor had previously informed us that Makara is the only believer in his family. Both his mother and father, devoted Buddhists, have never been receptive to hearing the gospel. In that moment, I began praying for their family to come to know and accept Jesus through their grief. And I received this peace that simply said “it’s done.”
I found His goodness in grief. I found God in loss. In this gaping, devastating, pain that marks and shatters so many of us in life. Most everyone loses someone close to them at some point in their life. Some of us deal with it in time, through substance abuse, through relationships, or through busyness. And some of us never deal with it, suppressing it until it becomes too much to bear and we begin hurting other people because of it. Without ever even being consciously aware of it, I’ve distanced my faith and grief as far apart as I could keep them for much of my life. God is good! I would claim, leaving out grief and death, unable to even touch such darkness and pain.
I fully expected that moment on Friday afternoon to break me. Less than an hour before, and standing maybe half a mile away from this home, we played a silly game, laughed, and danced with some of the village kids. To go from cloud nine to immediately witnessing the worst day of this family’s life could have easily driven me to give up on this Race, to give up on finding God’s peace and goodness in all things. Somehow, it did the opposite. He told me this family will one day come to know Him because of their loss. He told me that nothing is wasted, that there is still hope because He isn’t done yet. Losing someone you love and can’t imagine your life without is often rock bottom. But God is still there. He is there for the pain, He was there holding the devastated mother as she screamed and cried out in a language I can’t understand. He was there holding Makara, He was there holding Pastor Kim as he spoke words of encouragement. He was there in your grief, in the worst moment of your life too.
There’s a line in a Mat Kearney song that says “I guess we’re all one phone call from our knees”. This rings true for everyone, I believe. We’re all one terrible event away from losing every hope we carry ourselves through life from. But it doesn’t end there. Even if the phone rings, even if we lose it all, He is still good. And through our loss, we’re one step closer to the love we were made for.
My heart broke in a way I never expected this week. But through it, I found God in a place I didn’t even know I was missing Him. It’s been the longest, most exhausting week on the Race thus far. But I came out of it with the greatest peace I’ve felt yet. Thank you, Jesus.
