If I am honest, this month has been tough. At first I did not want to write this and be honest about how I feel, because I know people are funding me to be here. Since I raised $20,000+ I feel obligated to always be on my “A” game spiritually and emotionally. However, I’m just going to be real; I’m not really sure why I am writing this. Is it to help encourage someone who is feeling the same way? Is it the Lord trying to work on my vulnerability? Or maybe it is for some other reason that I may never understand. Nonetheless, here is my attempt to give you the inside scoop on what has really been going on inside of my heart/mind.
This month has sucked. Which is ironic because this month we are doing college ministry with ‘Campus Crusade for Christ’ here in Botswana, and college ministry usually gets me excited. I have seen 6 people accept the Lord through 1 on 1 conversations while evangelizing on campus. We have had a lot of good talks about Jesus through basketball on campus, bible studies, and just being white (which sometimes attracts people into a conversation with us). This has been a spiritually fruitful month as far as what is going on around us, but internally it has been a little troublesome.
I wish I could say “the joy of the Lord is my strength” and mean that whole-heartedly right now. I wish I could say I am “abiding” in Jesus and overflowing with “abundant life.” I wish I could say I am overjoyed to be here and super thankful for this opportunity. I wish I could say that I’m excited to get out of bed in the morning and don’t have grouchy or apathetic days. But the truth is that my heart is heavy. It was beginning to feel this way at the end of January and has definitely carried over into February here in Botswana.
I’m tired. I find myself reminiscing about different comforts back at home as of recently. I am realizing it is only month 5 of the race and I still have 6 more to go. I am questioning if what I am doing or the effort I am giving is really making a difference (I know this is a lie, but it still plagues me at times). I find myself wondering and worrying about what I’m going to do after I get back home from the race. I’ll be an almost 27-year-old going back home to sit at his parents house until I find out what’s next. Maybe it’s just my pride, but that idea not only scares me, but causes a little bit of embarrassment. I worry about when I am going to get married and have a family, which I strongly desire.
Nothing else satisfies me, no secular job gets me excited, and no vision outside of it being Jesus-related holds my attention for more than a couple of minutes. With this heavy call to ministry on my life, sometimes it feels like a burden. I fear that I might not answer that call well. My prayer is that God uses my life in a mighty way; that I would see revival happen all over the world. I don’t know how to put that in a job application or say it around a campfire amongst friends, without it sounding awkward.
Maybe it’s just the African heat that never subsides. Maybe it’s constantly living in community where I can’t get away and just go ‘do me,’ and not have to be considerate of others for a change. It could be the fact that I’m not sleeping well at night because of laying on a tile floor with a thin sleeping bag. Maybe I’m just being a drama queen and complaining because ‘it’s my world race and I can blog what I want to’.
Listed above ^ are all the things I am unsure of and things I do not know, but here is what I do know. Isaiah 41:10- “Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” I do know that Psalms 37:4 says “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I do know that our God is good and he has good plans for me, Jeremiah 29:11- “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” I know that I have to trust the promises of God and the truth of His Word beyond what I can see, beyond what I can understand, and definitely beyond what I may temporarily ‘feel’.
I will continue to call upon the Lord “to renew my strength”, I will continue to “abide in Him” and I will continue to obey knowing that “His ways and thoughts are higher than my ways and thoughts”. Although I feel a little down and out right now, our God is mighty to be praised and I will have joy again soon and look back and smile upon these days. I will grind and come lay my heart on the altar everyday even when I don’t feel it, and to that I quote the words of Micah 7:7-8- “But as for me, I will watch expectantly for the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me. Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy. Though I fall I will rise; Though I dwell in darkness, the Lord is my light.”
