Hello!
We are currently in Spain, month 11 {WHAT?!}. Our whole squad is walking the Camino de Santiago (way of St. James) as a part of processing & closing out our year of serving & discovering more of the Lord. The Camino is a pilgrimage; we are walking about 370 miles across the Northern portion of Spain over the course of 28 days. We’re staying in cheap hostels (called albergues) & ballin’ on a super tiny budget for the remainder of our time on the field. We’ve met some incredible people so far & I am excited to share some stories in a future blog.
I am also not sure where to begin talking about these past 11 months and how my life has been forever changed, so I am going to avoid that topic for now 🙂
Here is the team of beautiful & strong women I get to walk the Camino with:
Me, HB (Hannah Beth), AbbyLin (ABL), & Megan (also on team BAMMM). Our leadership let us choose who we wanted to finish our this race with & these are the three women I get to do life with for the next 3.5 weeks or so.
HB shared with us before we began walking that she was going to take about 2 days to process through each country we’ve served in on the race & I thought that was a great idea, so I’ve joined her.
Today I began processing through Peru & stumbled across a blog I sort of half-started writing in my journal but never shared with you. So I thought it would be awesome to take the time to do that today:)
Like many other months on the race, Peru was filled with experiences that drew me closer to the Lord & also challenged me in specific ways.
I think it was during month 3 that my idea of being a Christian raised in the U.S. was broken down. This was the month I began to question & understand for the first time how much the culture I was raised in influenced my faith in the Lord.
Being a Christian is hard. Period. John talked about how we were not created for this world, we will be ridiculed & mocked, we will be challenged & threatened for our faith (John 15:19; John 16:33). Being a Christian in the U.S., however, I did not realize how much my culture influenced my understanding of the Lord & his desires & plans for me. Spending so much time away from the culture and place I was raised has given me the opportunity to seek & understand the Lord in a new way I haven’t before.
I realized my culture has taught me a few things that the Lord has so graciously been un-teaching me throughout the race.
I have learned from my culture to feel shame for my past (to ignore things that are hard to face or talk about). I know Jesus gave his life to redeem those things even out of my control. My culture has taught me to first fulfill a desire, instead of seeking what I actually need (the grace of God, daily). Being raised in the United States has taught me to put worth & value in many things that are temporary, such as clothes, coffee, family, the newest gadget; whereas Jesus teaches me that the thing that is most valuable, I can’t put a price on & it’s eternal. American culture has taught me I need to earn my place, that I need to work hard in order to get what I deserve. Jesus continues to remind me that there is literally NOTHING I can do to earn his love, affection, grace. Knowing Jesus is counter to the culture I was raised in & because I choose to follow him, I am learning its okay to let go of some of the ways I was raised in order to more fully embrace a relationship with Him.
Thank you for reading 🙂
Maddie
