I haven’t been sick on the Race. Minus a small cold in month 2, I’m a complete anomaly on my squad. I haven’t been to the doctor in the last 11 months, and never had anything a few ibuprofen and drinking more water couldn’t fix. In coming on the Race, potentially getting sick was one of my biggest fears. Traveling to 11 countries in 11 months is a lot on your body. The thought of being in the middle of small villages in foreign countries without access to a doctor terrified me.
When I was 17, I came home from a weeklong mission trip to Jamaica with chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus that had me down for the count for two weeks. The good news is I got to miss a lot of school. The bad news is the fact that I picked up an unfamiliar sickness in a foreign country that most doctors in America haven’t even heard of.
As you may have guessed from the direction of this post, I’ve been sick the last few days. It’s our very last week of ministry here in Uganda and on the Race. I will be home in just a matter of days now. My teammate and bunkmate for the month began feeling the symptoms of strep throat a few days ago, and though I had my tonsils out when I was younger, of course I got sick too. We’ve been in Africa for three months now where malaria is extremely common and doesn’t discriminate against missionaries. Given the fact that malaria can present as flu-like symptoms and turn dangerous quickly, myself and two other teammates feeling sick went to see a nurse the next day and get a 75 cent (USD) malaria test. Thankfully, we all came back negative. Relieved to have something still unknown but far less dangerous, yet still frustrated I’m sick in our last week of ministry, I decided to still help my teammates with manual labor later that day around the compound where we’re living this month. I made it about an hour and a half in the ridiculous African sun and still feeling much less than 100% until myself and my teammates decided I’d pushed it too hard and I was sent back to bed to rest.
Though I haven’t wanted to admit it for obvious reasons, I have a pride problem. More specifically, I’d call it a grace problem. As in a lack of. Not too long ago I sat down with God for a few hours and poured my heart out thanking Him for all He’s done in these last eleven months. Sometimes, I feel unrecognizable. He has truly transformed me this year, and in ways I never could have predicted. I then prayed into my remaining time on the Race and asked Him to reveal what else He really wants me to grasp or learn before going home, knowing I’m more than likely not going to hear His voice as clearly back in my overwhelming life at home as I do here in the middle of east cupcake nowhere Uganda. He told me He wants me to learn humility. That kind of stung a little. Of course if I was truly humble it wouldn’t have at all, because humble people always think they have room to grow. Prideful people (named Mal) think they’re doing great and don’t need to grow or change anything at all. Okay, fine I can learn humility, I thought. Only a few days later, I started feeling sick and had to miss ministry. I’d love to tell you I battled pride the day I went to the nurse and had to be sent back to bed because I’m just such a hard worker and am so concerned for others over myself. I wear that mask pretty well. I actually battled pride that day because I’m judgmental and hard on myself knowing others are watching. In my mind, I’m on a team and there is work to be done so we all need to pull our own weight. Me being sick means I’m not pulling mine, and there’s a voice in my head that reminds me how often I judge others and think “are they really sick or just lazy? Geez, can’t they push through it?” I don’t have grace for others in similar situations so when the tables are turned and I’m the one sick, I feel guilty. This means I don’t have grace for myself. If I can’t push through it, how could I have expected them to?
We all know difficult people in our lives. There’s an old joke that says if you don’t know any difficult people in your life, it’s because you are one. I know I’ve dealt with difficult people my whole life, on the Race even. The problem isn’t so much in how I deal with these people as it is in the fact that I find and label them difficult in the first place. I’ve been convicted this week of the fact that I basically have a two column chart in my brain of all the people in my life: difficult people vs not. I have a lot less patience, grace, and let’s be honest, love for the difficult column. People who are easy to get along with are easier to love. People who don’t rub me the wrong way are easier to love. That doesn’t necessarily make me a terrible person, just about anyone would agree with me whether they want to admit it or not. But then, something (I’d like to think it was the Lord) made me wonder, how many people have me in their difficult column? Am I really so self-absorbed, so prideful and so arrogant that I not only call myself the Judge, but also assume that I’m the only one? Wow, that hit me hard.
I’ve been shown so very much grace in my life. Jesus died a sinner’s death thousands of years ago so I wouldn’t have to. He knew every single mistake I would ever make yet He still bore a cross that wasn’t His and died a death He didn’t earn. Yet I can’t show patience in a three minute conversation with a “difficult” person.
I’ve been rereading Bob Goff’s second book “Everybody, Always” for the last few days. He talks a lot about grace, and the fact that we’re supposed to love everybody, everyone in our lives, always, meaning no matter the circumstances or our own feelings.
“Here’s how it works: When I meet someone who is hard to get along with, I think, Can I love that person for the next thirty seconds? While they continue to irritate me, I find myself counting silently, . . . twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine . . . and before I get to thirty, I say to myself, Okay, I’m going to love that person for thirty more seconds. This is what I’ve been doing with the difficult commands of Jesus too. Instead of agreeing with all of them, I’m trying to obey God for thirty seconds at a time and live into them. I try to love the person in front of me the way Jesus did for the next thirty seconds rather than merely agree with Jesus and avoid them entirely, which I’m sad to say comes easier to me. I try to see difficult people in front of me for who they could become someday, and I keep reminding myself about this possibility for thirty seconds at a time.”
I want to love and look like Jesus. Because that’s what we’re called to. I’m learning that grace is just as important too. If I don’t show grace, to myself and more importantly to others, is it even really love? Even on sick days, there are always lessons to be learned here on the Race. I’m praying these lessons only continue to sink deeper into my heart as I prepare to come home to America so very soon.
