Thank Goodness {The story of my post World Race breakdown}

Thank Goodness

The story about my post world race break down

I finally had my “World Race Breakdown” after being home for 8 months. In my typical delayed emotional reaction I was about a year late. In the mist of the craziness of crew girl counseling this summer, I lost it; lying on my bed crying harder than I have ever cried in my life kind of lost it.

There are stories from my year on the world race that I don’t tell. I tell all the tales of great adventure and the ones that will get a laugh, but seldom do I tell the sad stories. There are images of faces that are etched into my memory forever. I remember the faces of the homeless women and her baby begging in the market in Thailand. The tower of skulls in Cambodia left as a genocide memorial. I can’t forget the sweet little girl in the red dress from Rwanda who is orphaned and HIV positive. The kids’ feet in Kenya full of jiggers, and the way their faces no longer flinch with pain when you dig into them with razors. I will forever love the beautiful girls in India who had been left behind by their parents because of there special needs. They are pictures that are never far away.

After getting home from my travels on The World Race the question, “why is life so hard?” grew bigger in my mind and started to take over. I became depressed, frustrated, and overwhelmed. I do not understand why so many people have to encounter such terrible things in their lives. Not just people in third world countries but the people in my life here as well.

 I held it all in, until one day mid-July, I lost it. My co-leader, Anna Dodge, sat in my cabin with me as I lay on my bed telling her everything that I had not told people for a year. She cried with me as I told the story after story of people I had met on my race. Not just about strangers living way across the world, but about people I knew, had spent time with, laughed with and prayed for. I described memories of actual people, my friends with real and broken stories.

 In that moment all I wanted was for someone to rub my back and tell me that I was all going to be OK. I only cried harder when I realized the people I was crying for had no one to tell them it was all going to be OK. And it is not OK. Sin, brokenness, hurt and pain have affected 100% of the population and my heart broke because of it.

The days and weeks after finally breaking down were filled with anger toward the crap in this world, and left me searching for answers.

About two weeks later, like a blaring alarm clock from God I woke up to the bible reference Psalm 10.

But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted;
    you consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you;
    you are the helper of the fatherless.
 Break the arm of the wicked man;
    call the evildoer to account for his wickedness
    that would not otherwise be found out.

When I began to question where God was in this messed up world He reminded me to

Have some Reverence; He is God, and He is Good.

So I entered this season being reminded to Thank His goodness. In a broken world where we all experience hurt, where the stories on the news are of people suffering, when memories of things I have seen with my own eyes flood my mind; I remember to thank his goodness. He is in the mist of the mess, fighting for the widow and the orphan, providing food to the hungry and setting the captives free. He is with me when questions rattle me to my core and anger at injustice wells up inside me.

I am reminded God’s character to His core- is Love and Goodness; He is God and who am I the question His power?

We serve a good God. So good that we don’t understand what Good really means.

It is His goodness I cling to.

It is the goodness of the Lord that I fight to see as we sort through the difficulty of this life.

 Life is good and it is beautiful. In spite of all the hard things life is going to throw our way there is still joy, love and laughter. There is a peace that covers us when we live in Christ and a beautiful whisper of hope that tells us that it is all going to be OK.

Love

Nika

 “It’s the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul. Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands. Sweet is nice enough, but bittersweet is beautiful, nuanced, full of depth and complexity. Bittersweet is courageous, gutsy, audacious, earthy.” –Shauna Niequist In the book Bittersweet.