I’ve been thinking way too much lately about way too many things. I feel like I’m at a crossroad in my life. I need to decide how I am going to live. Am I going to follow the call my Daddy has placed on my life? Am I going to continue to life by faith? Or am I going to give in to the pressure I feel and get a job to support myself? Everything inside of me just wants to live like this forever. But what am I called to do?
Being in the United States was incredibly difficult for me. I was unbelievably excited to see my friends and family again. But I was immediately struck with the loss of the community I lived life with for 11 months. I was way more invested than I thought I was. I really have changed a lot. I am a totally different person than I was a year ago. There has been so much freedom in my life that you can see a physical difference in me. It was hard to come back to people that I love so much who don’t know me anymore. There wasn’t enough time anywhere to spend really good quality time with anybody. I was SO BUSY. There was always something to do or someone to have coffee with. I forgot how busy America is. I forgot how time consuming the T.V. is. I forgot what it was like to not have time for Dad and to REALLY make time.
By the time I got to WR training camp at the end of May, I was suffocating. I was exhausted. I felt like an alien in my home country. How weird is that? I felt more at home in 3rd world countries than I did in my own. I began to think about that verse that says we are new creations. I began to think about how I really have become a soldier for JC. I began to really think about what it means to be set apart. I began to think about what it really means to be a citizen of heaven. I live here on earth but my allegiance lies above. I AM an alien. And soldiers never stay home for long. They come and go where they are needed. They come home for training and time with family and then they go out again to fight. We are called to be set apart from unbelievers. That means that people should look at my life and it shouldn’t make sense to them. It should look totally separate and different from an unbeliever. My life before the race looked strikingly similar to the life of an unbeliever. I don’t want that to ever happen again. I have learned to walk in so much boldness, confidence, and authority. I don’t think I want my life to make sense anymore.
I think this idea of being an alien on earth and having my citizenship in Heaven really hit me at the airport in Atlanta, Georgia. It was the day we left for India. I saw some U.S. soldiers coming through security at the same time we were. As I was gathering my stuff and waiting for people, I struck up conversation with one of them. His name was Brian and he was going to Afghanistan. As I was talking to him, Dad told me to pray for him. So right there, in front of who knows how many people, I grabbed his hand and prayed for him. You should have seen the looks I got. People thought I was some kind of saint. All I did was what Dad told me to do. But it stuck out so much that people noticed. They looked at me with admiration. It embarrassed me. I didn’t do it for that reason. But it made me think about why that small act stuck out so much. Because it set me apart. I was acting like a citizen of Heaven and not of earth.
20 hours of flying later, I arrived in India. I was exhausted, jet lagged, and really dirty. I could immediately see the poverty. The crumbling concrete buildings with tin roofs. The narrow streets crammed with people, cars, auto-rickshaws, and sometimes cows. Traffic is terrible. I could also immediately see the prosperity. Nice cars. HUGE billboards. The bus we were on was small and had no space for luggage. We had to cram 18 people plus 18 human sized bags into a bus made for 25. It was raining and, of course, the bus had no AC. I smiled on the inside. I looked at the 16 young women in the bus behind me. They have no idea what they are in for. They have no idea how they are going to get wrecked. They have no idea how they are going to wreck me. I have no idea how this country is going to wreck me.
The weird thing about it all is – my spirit immediately felt at peace when I got here. I feel more at home and at peace here in India than I did for the 4 weeks I was in the USA. I think that’s pretty rad.
I am really really excited about being here. We are going to a city called Goa in a few days. There, we will be helping RR get some new projects off the ground. We are going to be doing work with pre-school kids, teenagers, and women. We will live close to a slum. We are lucky enough to live really close to the beach (or so I’m told). There are going to be plenty of opportunities to express the love of Daddy to the people here.
Thank you ALL for your continued support!!!
