“My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” -2 corinthians 12:9
For anyone who knows me, I am very awkward and not the most graceful human you’ve ever met. I struggle with speaking English half the time. Yet God has found it in his heart to be patient with me and give me double portions of grace and send me to 11 countries.
This week of ministry has been a crazy ball of learning as you go, at least for me. Day one we went walking around downtown Lima and saw so many cool things! From there we spent 3 hours with kids with disabilities. I have learned a lot from last month and coming into this month about people who have disabilities. They live in a unforgiving world. I feel as though they understand so much more than we do about what it means to be human.
They are clothed in grace and love by God.
No one likes to be awkward. No one likes feeling less than or out of place. What I’ve been truly seeing for the first time, is by allowing yourself to become human (weak) and be awkward, it makes room for God to rule. Allowing space for God to move in you is powerful.
I became an awkward potato this week by standing on a street trying my best to speak Spanish to people passing by. With pieces of paper in hand and a smile on my face. Convincing strangers to take my paper and come to English class. This proved to put me in a very uncomfortable situation.
That feeling of being open and exposed was real. I don’t even know why it was so difficult.
I can tell you, I witnessed so many amazing conversations come out of this activity within minutes of starting.
Questions like: “is it really free?”, ” why are you doing it?”, and ” again is it really free?”
Obviously free is a very forgein word here.
So many deeper conversations started on that street with some of my teammates and locals walking past. All because so very loud uncomfortable Americans were yelling about free English. I’d stop to ask why too.
God really didn’t show me any of the pay off for being uncomforble/ awkward until the night of English class. 3 people showed up. I was in shock of how amazingly real these people were willing to be with us.
Just showing up to a strangers house in determination to learn. I felt so blessed to get to know these people.
Awkwardness is painful and wasted on its own. In God’s hands it can be used to create a beautiful evening full of laughs and lots of Google translate. 🙂
Those days are the days I hope I never forget, long after the race is over.
