All I could think was this is the last place I Want to be. I don’t want to go to a 16 year old girl’s’ funeral. Not because I did not want to go but I did not want it to have happened. I sat and stared at a casket. Inside laid a girl who had hung herself a few nights before.
My heart broke for the family. It broke for the fact that a mom had to bury her daughter and a father had to say goodbye to the dreams he held for her.
I knew the day was going to be hard. The Lord told me that in the morning.
I was crying and wanting to go back to bed before the day even started.
I made it through the girl’s funeral and ended up walking into another funeral for a man who drank himself to death.
It’s me, I’m the leader here, I am the person to help people process the day, to give hugs, and say “it’s all going to be ok”. Then they found lice in my hair that lead to everyone finding lice in their hair. I got a call with news that I had to take care of. I dealt with that. The day was full things that called on me to fix.
I wanted to run, check out but i kept on.
There were so many times I just wanted to run. I wanted to get out. To run so fast I tripped and collapsed on the floor as far away from reality as possible. I wanted to fall apart. I looked at my hands in the shower and imagined what it would look like for them the literally to fall apart.
But i kept on.
Then I went to bed pulled by sleeping bag over my head and pretended I was a child. My blanket was my covering and the world was gone while I was hiding.
I did not work I ended up crying over pictures of kids that are fleeing the war in syria.
It was one of those days that I would have rather not lived. Not because something happened to me but because the world make me so angry some time.
It’s so hard for me to see places void of love, hope and peace. I hate that the world in so many ways has walked away from the only thing that could really fix it.
To be honest sometimes I get angry at God because I don’t understand why these things like this happen. Why people feel so helpless they take their own life, why natural disasters level homes, why wars devastate and force people to live in a state of fear, why babies have to go to bed hungry and moms die of AIDS, why dads give into alcohol and leave their families behind. These are things make me lose sleep at night.
I know the sunday school answers but they don’t bring much comfort anymore.
Seeing the world has given me a deep loathing for sin and the destruction it causes. The smallest seed of sin will wreak havoc on the world it touches.
A little bitterness and unforgiveness divides family and starts wars, greed drives people to forget the people they love and destroy anything that stands in their way, lust and lack of self control has started an industry based on sex and forced so many women to live in fear of men. Each root of sin leads to more destruction then we understand. It is a world of people hurting and trying to drive out the pain in anyway possible.
It’s pride that keeps us from the redemption offered from the love of God.
In the midst of a world that seems to be taken over by brokenness and destruction. In a time where ISIS bombs cities, where Americans can not agree on even the color of a cup, where my life in Guatemala reminds me daily of a 3rd world that is living in lack of basic needs like food safety, and people’s lives seem to be cut short, there is hope.
There is a God who still sits on a throne whose character is love and His heart is redemption and wholeness for all people.
You can be full of power or full of pity. – Joyce Myer
He calls us to make an assault on the sin within people, to fight their demons, and bring healing and wholeness to their souls. Love is war and the weapons we have to fight the evil in this world are love, grace, forgiveness, peace, kindness, truth, patience, and joy. It is a fight that requires us to invite the Holy spirit into some very broken places of our hearts, so the enemy does not win. It takes reminding people that there is hope, there are greater things on the other side if you humble yourself before the Lord. Even when I think I can’t get out of bed in the morning I find strength in the Lord to press on.
It’s not easy but it is a battle worth engaging in. There is a fight to be won, a fight in the name of something greater, a fight in the name of we are not going to settle for this because there is so much more. A fight in the name of good and the love of a father that longs to see His people sit in love and peace at His feet.
My heart is broken over and over again. But it’s worth it. It means i’m living. It means I am here in the space God has called me to. To fight for Gap C squad, for my family, and for Guatemala Malaysia and Botswana. I fight for healing, for people to see what they have been given in the Lord. To know there in redemption because of the work of the cross. That we no longer have to live in the sin that has destroyed so many things, but there is hope in the Love of the father. I’m in this in the for freedom sake, for the freedom that comes when you let Jesus take away your sin and heal your heart.
Hebrews 11;14-16
For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is they desire a better country, that it, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city.
