Read this blog first then “In the surrender”
Reckless Abandonment
When these were the words God spoke over last month in C**** I knew that some big things were about to come my way…what I didn’t know is just how intense it would all be…
If I had to sum everything up in a quick few sentences I would say…last month I was stripped of everything that brings me security, not comforted by things that I thought once brought me happiness (examples: hot water, a hotel, and a bed) and was wrecked in every way last month. Where did I end up? Bare naked, humbled, broken, on my knees with hands raised up before the cross… realizing there are a lot hurting people and sorrow, much I do not understand, there is not always an answer…the pain doesn’t always make sense, but God is enough. That’s the bottom line of this month, God is ENOUGH, God can get the glory through anything and everything, and God will pick you up when you are overwhelmed, broken, and sobbing on the floor having no idea what the next step is…
From the moment we got to our province I started to feel the oppression, darkness, wounds, isolation, and the loneliest feeling I have ever felt on the race. As I walked into the hotel we stayed in for the month ($7.50 USD per person per night) to a room with a closet, bathroom with hot water, a shower I could stand up in, a real toilet and not a squatty potty, a place with toilet paper, sink with running water, shower shoes provided, a bed all to myself with a white down comforter and two big white pillows, a TV, heat, and even a nightstand with little switches so you didn’t have to get out of bed to turn off the lights…I have never felt so alone and heavy before. I was in the nicest of anywhere I have stayed on the world race but all I wanted to do was run back to any other country we have been to, or just hop on a flight straight back to Florida.
I was so overwhelmed in this new country and feeling the weight of this place that I woke up the next morning early as well as all throughout the night, had a horrible nightmare and emotionally didn’t think I could handle anything that day. The nightmares continued every night about really horrible things and fears of what was happening to the people I loved back home and to the point I was so close to just breaking the rules and getting on the internet to check in and see if everyone was ok…they just seemed so real and I have never had nightmares my whole life.
The next two days I got very sick and had to sit out of ministry…when I wasn’t getting better realizing that I had a bad sinus infection. Took Chinese medicine that is VERY strong and killed everything in my body along with everything good in me too. I got really nauseous taking the medicine (which I was told to be expected because Chinese medicine is SO much more intense they say then in the States) and my body couldn’t handle that plus the very spicy food we ate everyday, so I could not keep anything down for about 2 weeks. On the World Race we are extremely used to talking about what is going on with our bodies each month because someone always has the runs but I realize not everyone wants all details J so I will hold back from telling them all. I will say that at our ministry site or anywhere else I went ONLY had squatty potties…so that was super exciting while being sick…
This was the hardest month on the world race for me and I really struggled with not being able to talk to my family and friends back at home. I was so homesick and especially week one I missed home and my family so much I could barely think of anything else, cried everyday, and wondered how in the world I was going to make it almost three more months. Thinking isn’t nine months long enough God? I am tired of moving around every 3-4 weeks, I don’t want to live in this city where everything is so heavy, I want to go home…everything in me just ached for one minute just to talk to my sister someone who I felt like would understand and I would find comfort in.
It was 8 degrees C there and although we had to buy new clothes I still was never warm and at our ministry there was no heat just open windows and doors so you basically where still outside. Most days I wore 6 layers on top, 2-3 on the bottom, gloves, scarf, ear warmers or a hat and still I felt like one big ice cube that looked like a marshmellow. The place my team would sometimes find me in jumping on the kids small trampoline to try to get warm again. We walked 40 minutes to our ministry site each morning and 40 minutes home…and it rained every day and the sun literally never came out all month, so the dirt and back roads we took were squishy wet with mud. I never realized how much brighter things seem with the sun and how much I would miss it.
Now for the biggest part of last month…
Our ministry was very difficult for all of us working with boys/men with disabilities ages 14-30 years old and the welfare center with young children and babies. The middle and older boys as we called them were amazing and please hear me when I say that I LOVED those kids SO much. Emotionally though it was really hard loving and being with kids who have no parents, have been left behind, and are too old to get adopted. Hard to see them not want to make eye contact with you, pulling out all their hair to chew on, then trying to pull out all your hair or just take a bite out of it, watching one boy have multiple seizures each day even though he is on medication, watching him fall down with his helmet on and scratch up his hands and feet, to watch young boys just crying and shaking and not knowing how to help them as they scream out because they don’t even know what’s wrong, watching kids hurt each other because they have intellectual disabilities and don’t know any better, watching kids who just want to rock in a corner all day long, having boys tug on you not knowing their own strength….and bottom line loving these boys so much and just wanting something different for them. Struggling with some of the boys I saw SO much potential in and watching them all month and fully believe they could easily work at a place like Publix. Feeling so broken some day’s in not wanting to leave these boys, wow I am starting to cry just writing this out, because these boys are C**** Forgotten. The road they live on I call C****s forgotten people…a road of prisoners, a mental hospital, and then these orphaned boys.
The overwhelming feeling all month in C****, will things ever change here? People with disabilities are not worth anything in C****. I am still not sure how much I can share online about things or about the facility so I may just have to talk to those that are interested when I get home about it. I don’t want to jeopardize anything for this organization.
Lets just say its one thing to read about communism and think that you understand it and think that you truly appreciate the freedom we have in America but it’s another thing to live in it for a month. To live in a place where every time you turn there are signs about abortion because you can only have one child here, where people are forgotten about, where the mentality at least where I lived was it is all about me so people just push each other out of the way or cut you in line at the grocery store (this is just one small example), where you tube and facebook are banned and they are trying to get google removed from the people as well because they don’t want their people to have too much information, where you turn on the TV each morning with such limited channels knowing full well that everything is completely censored by the government. Walking the streets feeling my heart break more each step seeing the eyes of the hurting and the broken, feeling the weight of truth in my own heart and brokenness for them not knowing the truth. Seeing people worship everything but God yet still feeling empty. Knowing how many people are in C**** and knowing the workers are few for the Kingdom. It was the hardest month as far as that verse really hitting home big time.
I thought it would be Africa where I would hold a child moaning out because they were starving to death, but it was in C****…children living in a place where there is an 86% mortality rate, where for 14 children they get 2 meals a day, and each meal 4 bowls of food to split among 14 children. Where when you feed them you have to guard the food because the kids that can walk will come up and grab handfuls out of the bowl…where children eat other children’s throw up, poop off the ground, and sleep on a piece of wood with no mattress tangled up with two other children because there is not enough space and the government doesn’t give enough money for a mattress. Where their little arms and legs are so skinny and they are so incredibly malnourished you can barely make sense of what is in front of you. Where there are not real diapers but a stretchy string around their waist with a diaper material or just any plastic tucked into it as a diaper. For the first time in my life struggling to pray for healing over a child instead of please Jesus just take them to be with you because the moaning coming from them because they are hurting is too much…. My teammates had a baby pass away they named Jude and struggled with his death but also knowing now this little one wont suffer starvation. The death of a baby who received no proper funeral service and no mother or father brother or sister to care this little one had gone back to Heaven…the emotions of watching that happen are just impossible to type out.
This is where 3 of my teammates worked all month long, I was only up there for a day and my world was completely changed by it and my heart completely broken. I broke down crying sometimes looking at the food I was eating for dinner and the rights I felt that I had to eat whatever I wanted (in not liking the spicy food is what I am talking about) because I thought of those little children. Sure I may not have liked it but it was food and I should be more grateful. So the rest of the month I may not have liked the food in C**** but I never complained again and I was so grateful that God provided it.
The feeling of wanting to help so badly, seeing the forgotten children and people in this place, seeing pain like I have never seen before…not knowing what to think of it all and feeling like I wasn’t doing enough… learning that through it all God is still God. So much of my human thinking needed to be abandoned to not get overwhelmed and run away from things I didn’t understand, things that in a month I could not change. In many ways I had to abandon my past ways of thinking…this blog is already so long I will just have to talk about these things when I get home, but in the reckless abandonment there were many more things, many ways of thinking, and many things that happened that I either am not allowed or cant talk about over this blog.
I am sorry this blog even as I am writing it doesn’t all flow just right but the things of this last month are really hard to type out and have you understand as you would be able to in person J I love you all tons! Missed you!
