I spent half of my time in Nepal in the city side and the other half in the village side. I would say I thrived in the city, but went through a more difficult time in the village. Here is an entry of when I had just returned from my time in the village.
This past week I was tenting in a small jungle village in Gorkha, Nepal. The creation and people surrounding me were amazing, but due to my spiritual and mental state this turned out to be my hardest point on the race so far. I often fall into a very depressed and apathetic spirit around this time of year– there’s usually not a reason behind it, just the chemicals in my brain. I’ve never known why but it’s happened since I was 13. My thoughts become unwillingly darker and sometimes I just want to disappear for a few days and just come back to the world when I’m feeling like myself again. At home it takes a great toll on me, so when I started to feel this coming, I was worried and knew Gorkha would be a challenge for me. It’s a very quiet place where you have a lot of time to just think and spend time with God– the two things I didn’t want the most. There’s also so much spiritual darkness weighing down this village with only few believers be the walking light of this place. I got sucked into the darkness and carelessly let it consume my thoughts. When I used to feel this way years back, before I knew the Lord, I would turn to self harm. I would feel so emotionless and apathetic that I’d cut myself as a way to feel something. Since coming to Christ I have learned to lean on Him and I understand that He took all of my cuts and wounds on the cross so there is no reason for me to harm myself. In this time in the village I had many temptations to turn to self harm, truthfully because I was keeping myself so far from the Lord that these thoughts were able to enter. It was a real wake up call and showed me just how desperately I need Jesus to sustain and protect me. Praise God for protecting me in this time, I did not fall into temptation.
In this week I found that the Lord still wants to use me in my suffering. On my hardest day I had already planned the night before to stay back from ministry and hide away for the day, but God had a different plan for me. He spoke through a teammate of mine that I needed to be at ministry. This day I got to pray over so many amazing people and some very dark situations. My eyes were opened to the darkness and brokenness of this world, something I needed to see to turn my eyes to the Lord. Nothing too crazy or miraculous occurred, but God needed me to be a vessel of His love to them. I recognized that even in my own darkness, God still wants to be the light in me that pours out to other people. It was also really powerful to realize that I don’t need to be this perfect, happy and bubbly person for the Lord to use me as a light. For this reason I found joy in Gorkha, even though my spirit was heavy.
