I don’t believe in coincidences anymore. After the things I’ve learned about God and the way he works, I simply can’t imagine a life where much of anything is left up to chance. I do believe in cause and effect, that my actions and choices will have an impact on the trajectory of my life. I believe God created space for free will and that our imperfections lead us into chapters God did not intend. But I also believe in divine interventions. I know that my Father can and will chime in at the perfect time to direct me into goodness. I’m sure you’ve seen his intervention in your life. All those things we so commonly chalk up to good luck, or karma, or perfect timing. Perhaps it was the time you met the man who later become your other half, or the parking spot that opened up just as you pulled in? I’ll let you believe in chance if you want to, but let me tell you how “random happenings” have been changing my life.
The month of September I have been in Quito, Ecuador working in a beautiful place called Camp Hope. Camp Hope is a center for people with mental disabilities to receive the care they need during the day. They provide physical therapy, speech therapy, and individualized care for a wide range of different diagnoses. Coming into this month, my team and I imagined we would get a lot of face time with the sweet kids who come for care and love. You see, my team is really good at giving love and I know we would have loved each one really well. However, that isn’t what Camp Hope needed from us. They needed walls painted, weeds pulled, fruits and veggies sorted, floors cleaned, and a wide array of other maintenance on their center. Only two of the eight of us would actually be working in a classroom. On our first day, jobs were ‘randomly’ handed out, and not by chance but by the will of God, I was one of the two to be sent to work in the classroom.
I am going to back up real quick and tell you where I was mentally/spiritually on the first day we walked into Camp Hope. Like I have mentioned before, the World Race is more than a mission trip, it is a discipleship program and they are concerned about our personal growth just as much as the actually work we do for ministry. So basically, they call us out in things in which they see are not Christ-like, or in ways we can grow more intimate in our walk with the Father. During Training Camp in June, Ashley (our squad mentor) pulled me aside to talk about something that was hindering me from walking in full intimacy with the Lord. You see, I have this thing that most people would call a ‘control issue’. I like/ am used to taking control of a situation and manipulating it to work out the way I think it should. I could sit here and explain the root behind this, but I’m not going to. However, I have come to see that this control issue I have is really a ‘trust issue’. Whether I’m not trusting people to take care of things or God to not take care of me or the people I love, I have come into this habit of thinking it is my responsibility to get things done. This month the Lord decided to teach me about trust.
Let’s go back to when I’m walking into the first day of working in the classroom with my teammate Nichol. We go where they tell they need us, which is with a group of people with mental paralysis, meaning they have little to no control over anything. Can you see where I’m going here? Working in this classroom rocked me. Five out of the seven in our group are from an orphanage. All of them have an array of diagnosis, but the one common one is mental paralysis. Before this month I have never been exposed to this type of disability and it was hard for me to understand. I struggled with feeling pity, feeling anger, and feeling helpless. I had no training before walking into the classroom and now I was responsible for feeding, changing, moving, and exercising the kids in our group. It was intimidating and a little scary. On my first day, I thought our team would be rotating, so the next day someone else would be in here and I could go pull weeds. But the teacher didn’t want to have to keep training new helpers, so I stayed and worked in the classroom for the whole first week.
In that week, I learned a lot about how to care for the kids, how to posture my heart so that I could give them the best care possible, and I developed a huge respect for the workers who do it every day. But God put me in there on that first day and had me stay there so I could learn something bigger. I learned what it looks like to really not have control. God told me to look and see how he takes care of his children. God does take care of his children. For a big portion of my life, I have been wrestling with God for the reigns of my life. I did not want to put my trust in his care and needed to do it all on my own. Well, that is exhausting and I’m tired of wrestling. The sweet kids in our class don’t have the choice I do. They don’t get to wrestle for control, it was taken from them by their disease. But God steps in and cares for them. Camp Hope was created on a God-centered mission and our Father continues to send hundreds of volunteers there to care for his children.
I knew that there would be unimaginable growth in me this year, but I never imagined that I would walk into a classroom filled with people who relied on me helping them and that I would be the one impacted so strongly. God wants my trust. He wants me to believe that he will take care of me, that he will take care of things at home, and that he wants me to walk in freedom. So he grabbed my hand, led me into the classroom, showed me how to take care of his children, and then asked me if he could do the same with me.
“In you, Lord my God, I put my trust.”
Psalm 25:1
With love,
Lina
