clotheslined.

This blog was written by Stacey Hume, she is currently on the field in the Philippines. It is a bit lengthy, but extremely worth it!

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This may be a bit disjointed, so as a warning I am telling you to be gracious with this post.
I
fell off a laundry line today.  from five feet in the air, I tripped
and came down to earth with a fairly impressive thud.   I managed to
pretty severely mangle myself, but that isn’t where the story begins. 
It’s only the place that it gets good.

The story begins with
last night. I was in my bed by 10, like a good missionary.  But like a
bad missionary I was thinking very intently on something, well someone,
that I should not have been.  An old love came to mind, and I started
to wonder about possibilities.  I should know by now just how pointless
this is, considering my previous track record of sleepless nights, but
I couldn’t help it.  The train of thought ran away with itself. There
were just no breaks.   Before I knew it I was re-planning a
relationship that had already been broken… twice.  Laying in the
dark, I watched the clock go from 10, to 11, to 12, to 1, to 2, to 3
am.  Yep.  5 hours of staring into nothing, thinking about something
ridiculous.  But, I am a girl.  So once in a blue moon I am allowed. 

At
three am, even after the best attempts at trying to fall asleep
(including but not limited to: Nyquil and a boring podcast,  my
sleeping play list and reading poetry, journaling and the bible,
praying and plain old fashioned wishing on a star), it was futile.  I
was awake.  So in an effort to un-stick myself, instead of thinking, I
started listening.  And surprise, when my mind shut off its monologue,
I found whispering away into the night, the voice of the Lord.  Being
the gentleman that he is, He approached me sweetly.  What are you
doing? He asked.  Wasting time on you know who.  I replied.  Help me
sleep? I asked him back.

“Talk to me a while, instead.  I
have things I want to share with you.”  And so the Lord began to speak
to me in intimate tones.  Of the love he had for me, and the year of
promise that was quickly arriving.  I turn 25 in a few days, if you
didn’t know.  And he asked me to make him 25 promises.  He said that he
would, in return give me 25 promises of his own.  
So I entered into a pact.   For the sake of brevity I will stick with the first three promises:
1. I will love the Lord more than any man.
2. I will listen to His voice over my own.
3. I will rebuild my temple.

So
in the quiet of the morning, just as the sun was rising I pledged my
heart secretly to the Lord.  It felt forbidden and sexy almost, in a
room with 8 other sleeping women, who did not know of the strange
suitor in my bed with me.  Lit up by the red glow of a headlamp, I fell
in love again.  This time with someone worth while. 

The next
morning I pledged I would get up to accomplish 2 of those promises, or
start them anyways.  Number 1 and Number 3.  So I set my alarm for
6:30, in a mere 2 hours, to run.  I would leave this old love on the
field for good. I promised the Lord I would not stop running until that
haunting memory was gone. 

And so when the sun rose, I rose. 
And I ran.  And ran.  And ran.  In my bleary state I moved farther and
farther away from my past.  With each step, I became more secure in my
new love of Jesus, and self worth.  By 7:30 that man was gone.  I left
him on the track.
So excited and happy for the way that the Lord was
loving me, I charged into the day full steam.  I went and shoveled
rocks.  And when I saw a friend of mine, sitting on a bench crying,
well I knew that she needed the joy and excitement I was feeling as
well.  So before I knew what I was doing, I was standing on top of a
laundry line dancing and singing.  “I’m trading my sorrows, I’m trading
my shame, I’m laying them down for the joy of the Lord.”  I also did a
pretty great version of “Shake your groove thing, shake your groove
thing yeah yeah… Let’s show the Lord we can dance.”  Swinging and
dancing with the ease of a gymnast, on a high wire.  I broke it down. 
Literally.  When it came time for the dismount, I reached onto the mast
of the line, and stepped backwards onto the support beam.   Well, just
so you know.  Always check for dry rot, because the mast gave way, and
so did my body.  I fell backwards, somehow by the grace of JESUS to
miss the hard wire laundry lines running 10 inches apart, and rubbing
up on the support beam I caught three nails with my back and came down
with a massive thud.  I settled into the earth like a woman well
weighted. Two of my friends watching this came running over screaming.
What did you break?!  What did you break?!  When I got enough air to
breathe, all I could manage to say into the grass was, “Rejoice in the
Lord Always, again I say rejoice.” 

They looked at me like
I was nuts.  Like somehow in falling 5 feet onto my side, I had rattled
loose my brain.  They steadily rolled me to my stomach to assess the
damages.  All I heard was “SSSSSSS” the sucking of air through closed
teeth.  So I said,  “That can’t be good.   Well it doesn’t hurt, so
don’t tell me what it looks like, or it will make it worse. Is it
bleeding?”  Christy replied, “Yeah…  A lot…  Let’s get you up
stairs to somewhere we can clean this.”   Alright.  I have the strength
of a thousand camels.  And the grace of none.     They both started
hysterically laughing. I didn’t mean that for anyone else but me to
hear, but apparently I said out loud what I was saying in my head.  And
as I picked myself off the ground with their help, the only thing I
remember seeing was the portion of the laundry line I just fell off. 
It stood in the perfect shape of a cross.

Beautiful I thought. 
And was carried inside.  The whole time I was wondering, why am I not
more worried about this? Why did I say rejoice, I should be screaming
in pain.  But no.  I’m happy I did this.  I made my friend laugh and
stop crying.  Mission accomplished.  They stretched me out on our dorm
floor  to clean my bloody back and side.  Jess, my team leader was in
the room and she was horrified.  The only thing she could say was “why
the hell were you on a laundry line?”

They cleaned and bandaged
my wounds, and set me upright on the ground.  How do you feel, said the
two dozen eyes staring at me.  Fine.  Surprisingly fine. 

I
then launched into an explanation of what happened and why I did it.  
There was just no reason for my friend to sit in that sadness.  So, I
don’t know.  I tried to bring her joy.  
No one really understood me
or why I had done what I had done.  And to be honest, I don’t really
either.  I was on the ground, and then I was a bird on a
wire…dancing  That’s about all I can say. Sorry Mom and Dad, I’m
still apparently not that smart.

So when it came later in the
hour to go to the bathroom, I wanted to see what it looked like. 
Locked inside our community showers, alone, I pulled off the bandages
to see, three huge gouges.  They didn’t hurt, but they were quite
bloody and I knew they would scar.

(HERE COMES THE DISJOINTED PART)

I
was instantly reminded of a vision I had in month one of the race, in
the Domican Republic.  One afternoon I was standing in my shower, and I
watched as the water ran red.  And looking down, I saw my skin falling
off in shreds and collecting by my feet.  Collapsing to the floor in
pain, I looked at bare muscle and sinew.  I was fully exposed and every
part of me was on fire.  I started screaming.  Someone even knocked on
the bathroom door to see if I was alright.  And then Jesus walked in
through the closed door.  With eyes of compassion he said, you are
going to suffer.  This is not going to be easy.  But, beloved it will
be worthy of your pain.  I promise. 

I stared at him in blank
wonder.  And watched as he took new skin from his hands and reknit me. 
Covering me in a new outer shell.  When he was finished, I ran to the
mirror to see not myself, but Him staring back at me in my reflection.
The radiance of his face was mesmerizing.   A choir of angels started
singing, and then suddenly I was alone again.  With my bar of soap,
staring, dripping wet into a mirror at my own face.  That’s it.  This
race is going to make me an insane person.  I’m losing it week one.
This is not good.

(BACK TO TODAY)

So standing in
the bathroom,  I looked at my back.  Red and bloody and bruising.   It
took my breath for a little while.   But again,  Jesus somehow managed
to get into a locked room to stand beside me.   Lifting his own shirt,
he exposed his back next to mine in the mirror.  His scars were just
like mine.  “I told you I would make you look like me.” 

I
started to cry.  Not for my scars, but for His. Upon seeing my tears,
he held my face in the palms of His hands and said,  “You climbed on a
cross.  You did it to bring someone freedom and life.  You hung on the
nails.   You did it for love.  You look just like me.  I am so proud of
you.  You are more beautiful than any other woman in the world. I
promise you Stacey, it is finished.  “

And
staring at Him, staring at me I realized it was finished.  My constant
battle of despair and doubt was over.  And He spoke again, “Some scars
come from a lack of gracefulness.  Some scars are stupidity meeting
flesh.  But once in a rare while, a scar is a mark of a war raged.  A
battle fought and won, a step forward forever.  This ground will not be
taken again.”   And at the end of it, I realize that it really had
nothing to do with the fall, nothing to do with the nails, or the earth
and rock hitting my face.  I learn lessons the hard way, so it would
take a marker for me to realize what an amazing thing God had done in
my life. I was finally happy. I was finally free.

The
impossible task of my life, to take a broken and frustrated woman who
was utterly lost, and transform her into something that she believes,
TRULY believes, is worthy and joyful has happened.  I’m not sure how
God did it, but He did it.   What I never thought I could find, found
me.   On a laundry line.  In the Philippines.