This blog is way late, but in Thailand you all know we had the amazing opportunity to build relationships with the men and women of bar street in Chiang Mai. I wanted to tell you one story that was very close to my heart from that experience. Besides the women and girls that work at the bars, there are also male prostitutes and ‘ladyboys’. One of the ladyboys we met in our time there was my favorite. He told us to call him ‘Suzy’.
Suzy was immediately on my heart. We met him one night while looking into the distance at something beautiful in the air, that we could not figure out what they were. He came over and told us that they were chinese lanterns and that the people sent them up this time of year for good luck in the new year. After that meeting, we got to hang with Suzy multiple times in the next weeks.
One time, thank Jesus, we had the blessing of having a translator with us. Suzy spoke pretty good english, but it still helped us have a deeper conversation by having an extra person with us who could speak his native tongue. So that night we got to hear from the heart of the real Suzy. He told us a bit of his story, and to sum it up he doesn’t trust anyone. Every night he prays to himself, to his strength. When he cries, he cries alone behind closed doors. Not in front of anyone; he doesn’t need anyone. That night we each got to speak to him of the hope that we have in our lives, but Suzy did not seem in any way convinced. He knew we loved him, and that was all we could do that night.
Another night, I stayed home to pray (our team would usually split up and half would pray and half would ‘go out’) and had the blessing of a guitar at my finger tips. I felt before we even got to Thailand that Isaiah 62 was on the Lord’s heart for this nation. The passage covers a lot of territory but a few of the verses say:
4 No longer will they call you Deserted,
or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah,
and your land Beulah;
for the LORD will take delight in you,
and your land will be married.
5 As a young man marries a young woman,
so will your Builder marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you.
11 The LORD has made proclamation
to the ends of the earth:
“Say to Daughter Zion,
‘See, your Savior comes!
See, his reward is with him,
and his recompense accompanies him.'”
12 They will be called the Holy People,
the Redeemed of the LORD;
and you will be called Sought After,
the City No Longer Deserted.
It speaks of being married to the Lord, of being given a new name, of being delighted and rejoiced over, it talks about being sought after. Now, these are all things I deal with believing about myself. Without sounding too much like the movie Never Been Kissed (which could be my documentary), I’ve definitely dealt with doubt and rejection at not being sought out much by my father, and by being 28 years old and having never had a real boyfriend or a boy pursue me. I’m in the process of letting truth about who I am in Jesus overcome anything that I would know in the natural. That I have a God who is madly in love with me.
So, I got the chance to wail on the guitar that night and just cry out truth over myself and over my friend Suzy. The Lord’s presence joined me in those songs that night- declaring who I am. Declaring who he is. ‘I call you Sought After.’ ‘They’ve told you, you have to be a certain thing, but that’s not who you are.’
When we left, we all went to say goodbye to Suzy and he told one of my friends his real name. A real name… not the false name and mask that he puts on for the street work. The Lord is in the business of calling the real ‘us’ out of ourselves and the masks we put up. His name for us is what we were created to be, it’s what He sees when He looks at us. His name for Suzy is Sought After and Not Alone. These are some of the things the Lord sees when He looks at His beloved Suzy.
