The whisper will come to me in the middle of a car ride, somewhere in a mountain, as I stare at tin roofs a midst mountainous greens and realize that somewhere within those houses are people who are alive and breathing in there. They fight for a life. Fighting for life might look like walking to get water and heating food over fire every day. There is no luxury of a stove to get their food cooked fast and I imagine there is little time to rest with laundry to do and kids to care for. “This is all that some people in the world know.”
On the race, I come for a while and leave every month, my heart wrecked more than it was before. It’s what I do given that this is an 11n11 mission trip meant to break me until there is nothing left but Jesus showing Himself everywhere among chaos, hurt, and pain. I started this journey by leaving everything that I knew so I could understand what people in third world countries endure in His perspective.
Why does a girl like me get to pass through various lives around the world like wind? Thumbprints of truth, thumbprints of bravery, life lived, and cultures experienced… I have been stamped across continents and countries that hold pieces in my heart I never knew I had because of the people I have encountered. What about them, though? What about all these people? Do they get a taste of this world made by God like I have? They are no different than me.
Right now, there seem to be more questions flooding my heart and mind than answers. I can’t just push this all away. I can’t just move forward and pretend like I didn’t hold a 9 year old who weighed less than 30 pounds in my arms and looked into my eyes like we were friends under the African sun. I can’t just pretend that prostitutes aren’t at bars right now and that they are safe in somewhere sound – because I tangibly saw both kinds of people living life the way they do — and I somehow got to walk alongside them in it for a sliver of time, which is extraordinary and something a lot of people never get to do in this world.
It’s different when you go and actually see things with your own eyes. 11n11 is life lived alongside these people each month, sharing with them in the life and love of Christ in our own shortcomings, faults, and gifting’s — learning together what it means to live in harmony and community despite all the hard things that life and this world inevitably bring along with it.
There is absolutely no way I’m going to stand to reverse back into ignorance. It will be so easy to become complacent in a society that is ignorant… But I don’t want to forget these stories that have completely changed the trajectory of my own. I don’t want or need to settle for the mindset of “This is how it is.” Because yes, while it is this-way, there is also a that-way that swims upstream, a “that-way” I will be carrying with me for the rest of my life… The Lord can and will do it that-way like He always does, though, and He will use those who are willing to have their hearts wrecked, broken, and renewed in favor of His kingdom being brought to earth.
He will not settle until His work is finished; not until these raw moments of life lived leave dead bones rising from ash and stagnant hearts thumping joy and inspiring movement inside every home… Even the one that is nestled inside of a Guatemalan mountain, seemingly forgotten, unreached, and unseen.
But I was given this chance to see. I have seen through windows, cracks, and crevices of the world with my own eyes in hopes that you may open your eyes and see, too. I may leave these places and people behind each month, but I cannot will myself to turn the other way now that I have seen them in real-time. This might be all they know, but I also know some things, too; and when perspectives collide, the work of God – like stars in the sky – has the power to transcend over all darkness, illuminating everything so the path is clear for everyone who desires to walk it.
