One of my favorite analogies to use between God and I is that of the Potter. I reference my life as a lump of clay on the Potter’s wheel more than any other. Mainly because I can’t think of anything else that explains my life any better. But, it wasn’t until recently (and by recently I mean yesterday) that I realized sometimes God takes the pot in it’s current state and smashes it into a thousand pieces and starts over. The process of being truly broken. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this in other blogs, but when preparing to go on the race, I prayed for brokenness. I thought brokenness was the feeling I felt when I found out Vivian died. I thought it was the feeling I had in Albania when all I could do was sleep and hope the day would end soon. I thought it was seeing poverty or meeting people who “know” Jesus, but don’t actually KNOW Jesus.
If you are a new subscriber to the life of Abigale Bass then you might not know that when I was 14 I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and depression. It was something I had lived with my whole life unknowingly and something I’ll continue to live with. Luckily, shortly after being diagnosed, Jesus met me in my dark place and we started to walk together. The walk has not been easy and there have certainly been times when I’ve left Him alone in the road to try a few paths by myself, but we always ended back up together (what a sappy love story, am I right?). By my senior year of high school, I had it all figured out. Anxiety no longer had control over my daily life. I still had days where it was hard to get out of bed or stress made me physically sick, but those days were few and far between. When filling out forms for the World Race, it had been well over a year since I had been on any anxiety/depression medication and I decided that since I was going on a mission trip and following the Lord that He was just going to make my problems disappear for nine months.
Going into the race, I craved Godly community and sisterhood more than anything else. I wanted to love people well, especially the people put on my team, and I wanted them to love me too. I was given the word “Kamikaze” by my friend/mentor Becca, as my word for the race. It was a word that started out as a joke between the two of us, but then took form to remind me to daily die to myself. In a way that’s exactly what I did, but not in a healthy way to where you and everyone around you are being filled properly. I did it in a way that left the me that has anxiety and depression and all my other human needs in America. I’d be writing a novel if I were to sit here and list out all the battles I’ve faced being on the mission field. All the battles I’ve fought with my team. All the battles I’ve fought with myself. All the battles I’ve fought with Lord and with the enemy. But here I am in my sixth month of the race and the sledgehammer is crashing down on me.
If I haven’t told you already, after our week long debrief in Manila, the 23 all girls Tacloban team got stranded in Manila. It started out with not being able to buy bus tickets, to a typhoon, to a bus driver strike, to a bombing, to finally just buying our own plane tickets. What was supposed to be a one week trip to Manila ended up lasting like three. During our time at KIM in Manila we had to make our own make-shift Christmas (honestly, one of my favorite Christmas’ yet), we had to find our own ministry, and we had to entertain ourselves. I ended up doing a devotional on the book of Ruth that was amazing and was able to sit and do some processing. In my processing I began to realize how much emotional, spiritual, and mental damage I had allowed myself to take on over the last 5 1/2 months. It was scary. I was completely empty. The kind of empty that makes you feel helpless. I had no more to give to anyone. I didn’t even have anything to give myself. In this place of brokenness, fear crept in and with it the enemy told me that I would be better off going home than letting anymore damage happen. I was far beyond repair and that there was nothing left for me on the race. I haven’t been so devastated in a long time. I sat with the lies the devil was feeding me for a couple of days until I decided to share with some trusted friends (and my mom) what was going on in my head and that I wanted to come home. They all agreed to pray for me and with me and that after Parent Vision Trip I’d make the decision.
To back track just a little bit, shortly after being back in Tacloban I started to have trouble sleeping. It started with waking up multiple times a night with my heart racing and being very fearful, to having crazy scary dreams, to being tormented by the devil while wide awake in my bed. Two other girls, Ciera and Mady had been experiencing similar things and when it had been days since the three of us had slept we decided to take action. We prayed over our rooms multiple times, slept with worship music on, and then last night had people sign up for every hour of the night to sit outside our rooms and pray for us. Unfortunately, I am still only running on about 4 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours, but we are still claiming our victory.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been what in the south we like to call “dog tired”, but that’s what I’ve been. I know there is more to this spiritual warfare than what meets the eye, but one thing I do know is the devil was trying to keep me from hearing the Lord’s voice. He also brought me to a place of just being straight up pissed at God. At this point I was just ready to go home and call it quits. I was done. Because the Lord has blessed me with some really awesome, wise, and caring girls here, they convinced me to call my squad mentor and talk to her about wanting to go home. So, I did and I didn’t mention the spiritual warfare, because I didn’t see any correlation and I never mentioned being fearful of anything, but at the end of our call she told me that she didn’t want me to make a decision out of fear and to figure out what it was that I’m afraid of. She also told me to find His peace and what it looks like. Although, I’ve dealt with having anxiety, I never saw myself as a fearful person. I thought I was fearless and some of my family would have said the same. I jump without looking. But I took a few steps back and saw that a lot of areas in my life are being controlled by fear and my anxiety has been masking them. So I knew that if nothing else I had some things I needed to work on and through whether staying on the field or going home. So, I was ready to work on those things and wait for the Lord to tell me to stay or go. But the sleepless, terrifying nights continued and instead of walking with the Lord, I was walking away from him. I was tired and angry.
Last night was the night that everyone took shifts praying for us. I fell asleep around 8 and woke up at almost every shift change scared and overwhelmed. At around 1am I was walking back downstairs to my room and I saw a cockroach, which in third world country is a pretty regular thing and I pointed at it and verbally said aloud “as long as you’re not in my room”. Then, at 3 am I woke up to a cockroach crawling all over my legs. I immediately jumped out of bed and shook it off. It disappeared. I couldn’t see it. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought you imagined something traumatizing and felt that embarrassment, but that’s what I felt. It was one thing to actually have a cockroach on you and another to make a scene and it not actually be there. Then it came running out from under my bed and I looked at my bed partner Mady who I had scared awake and said “There was a freaking cockroach on me!!!” I have ALWAYS been scared of cockroaches and of all the creatures on the earth, I associate them with the devil. I know that for a fact because I verbally told that cockroach not to come into my room that Satan put that cockroach on me. Needless to say, I did not get back in bed. Instead I joined Ciera, Olivia, and Madison on the couch outside our rooms and lost it. I broke down in anger and frustration and just plain exhaustion.
At 4am when their prayer shift was over Olivia offered to stay up with me and invited me upstairs to the living room to sit with her. We sat on one of the couches and I began to fight with God in my head. I was yelling at Him. Blaming Him. Asking Him why. Then Olivia asks me “What are you thinking about?” I told her I was praying and normal Abigale would have left it at that, but I started telling her all my frustrations and feelings with everything that was going on. She asked if I had talked to my mom and I told her she knew I was thinking about coming home but not about the spiritual warfare. Then Olivia called my mom and through more tears I told my mom what was going on and my mom tells me that she and my dad had been having a hard time and that the devil was trying to keep them from coming to PVT. I lost it, I just started to sob. My mom kept telling me that everything was going to be okay and not to let the devil win. She told me that the Lord was using me in a big way and that something even bigger was about to happen and the devil was trying to stop me. The devil wanted me to go home. I had her sing me a song that she used to sing to me the first time I ever experienced spiritual warfare and then we said goodbye. The peace of the Lord washed over me like a wave in that moment and I couldn’t help but smile and laugh. Olivia and I talked about how big the things must be that the Lord is about to do, for the devil to be trying so hard to stop it. It brought me back to the passage I had read the day before in Haggai. The Lord tells Haggai to tell the people to rebuild the temple and that the new temple would be so much better than the previous one that had been torn down. He said that He would pour His Holy Spirit out onto the temple and to not be afraid for the Lord was with him for he was the chosen one. I heard the Lord tell me that I am the temple being rebuilt from the bottom up and that He is going to pour out His spirit on me that all I needed to do was sit and wait. I was chosen and to loose the grip fear had on me. The battle is not over, but it has been won. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight or why the other girls are experiencing this as well. I don’t know what the devil is trying to keep from happening, but I know that I have the Almighty God and His angel warriors guarding me and that if the devil wants to mess with me, I’m going to give him a run for his money. He picked the wrong one this time.
