February 14th was our last day in Phnom Penh,
Cambodia and that evening we drove to the airport and were on our way to
Bangkok, Thailand. Let me process that
with you for a minute: I have been out of the United States for a month and am
already on month 2 of 4? Yep, even I am questioning that; because to me, it
doesn’t seem possible that time has passed that quickly!
Cambodia and all that it entailed – the people, the places,
the food, and the memories – quickly stole my heart, so saying goodbye was
hard. It didn’t hit me that I wouldn’t be back until we touched down in rainy,
overcast Thailand and I quickly realized that this was not a weekend get-a-way,
this was now home.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Thailand so far, but it’s new. We
don’t know where all the cheap, amazing food is, we don’t know our way around
yet and we don’t know what our ministry is going to look like.
Moving on to a new country is just another way you learn to
be flexible and fluid on The World Race – it ensures that you don’t get
comfortable. I love that, because complacency is a dangerous place.
We have not even been in Bangkok for 12 hours and I can
already tell that God is going to use this month to grow and stretch us. We are
going to deal with situations and conditions and we are going to have to make a
choice.
Like Tuesday morning when we arrived in Bangkok after an 8-hour
layover, no sleep in 24+ hours and discovered that our checked bags did not
make it to Bangkok with us. – we had a choice to make. Maybe we were all too
exhausted to process at the moment, but we shrugged, filled out the lost
luggage claim and went our way. Is it ideal? Nope. Can I live without it for a
few days? Absolutely. In the states I was an over-packer, but I have learned
real quick that nothing is an absolute necessity.
So, while I am going to ask you to pray for our bags to be
returned to us quickly [update: we got them this morning!], I am going to challenge you to join me on this journey
of becoming more flexible in your life and to push yourself even further by becoming fluid, because you can choose not to be flexible, but fluidity cannot be broken. I am going to challenge you to take a good hard look at what this
life is truly about – to bring glory to God in everything you do, say and
think, to abandon some things that are holding you back from pursuing God with
everything you have. After all, we won’t have all of our experiences or
material stuff with us when we stand before Him, it’s just going to be you and
the Creator of the Universe.
