It is Month 9 of the World Race. First of all, how the heck is it already month 9? Second of all, how the heck is it only Month 9? Sometimes, I feel like I have been gone an eternity and other times I feel like I just hopped on a plane out of Atlanta.
One of the most recent feelings I have felt though has absolutely nothing to do with time but much more to do with circumstances. Our squad has been to Africa for 3 months, Asia for 5 months, and now we are in our first month of 3 in Central America, specifically Guatemala. Each area and country has it’s own unique culture and traditions, which I have loved getting to learn about and immerse myself in for the last 8 months, and I cannot wait to continue experiencing the Central American culture. However, there is one thing that has stayed the same…poverty.
The poverty, family situations, sickness, and everything else bad I have seen over the last eight months hits me in different times and different manners. Sometimes, I feel the hurt and the pain of the people while I am with them, while other times I feel as if I have become numb to it because I have seen it over and over again but then maybe feel it later. Last month in Malaysia, it all came back to me at one time.
I had walked to McDonald’s to get a McFlurry and was just walking back on my normal route, seeing the same people I always passed each and every day, but it hit me. It hit me hard, and it hit me all at once. There was nothing normal about the homeless families, men, and women on the side of the road, and there is nothing normal about what I have experienced and seen over the last several months. Suddenly, all the poverty and hard things I had seen in the last 8 months came rushing over me and images entered into my mind. Images of kids who had been raised as child soldiers, children homeless and unable to attend school or who have flies in their eyes because there is no clean water, old women walking over five miles one way to retrieve water for their families but never having enough, a leprosy colony of people deemed outsiders by the government, kids who get one meal a week, women selling their bodies to provide, families with one room for a family of 11, homeless men on the side of the road addicted to drugs or giving up on their lives and letting their leg become extremely infected. I was beyond overwhelmed.
I started weeping and couldn’t stop.
I’m sure I looked like a crazy person walking down the road crying and talking out loud to God, but I couldn’t fathom how to deal with the way I was feeling. I kept asking God what in the world was the point of this? What was the point of all the bad happening? And why in the world He showed it all to me when there is absolutely nothing I can do?
As He does, He whispered to me, “love one. Show My love to just one.”
That didn’t satisfy my tears though because I couldn’t understand how all these people would be taken care of? What about the people who aren’t even poor, but just don’t know Jesus? I care just as much for them because what are they living for if it is not Him? What about all the poverty and those people who can’t even provide enough food for their family to eat once a day much less three times a day? What about the kids who couldn’t go to school to change the cycle their family was in?
And as He does, He whispered again to me, “I am a BIG God.”
God is big and calls each and every person on this earth His child, if they would just accept His love. My job is not to save them all, help them all, instead, my job is to stop for the one. Build relationships with the one. The Lord asked me a question…”Would I have left on this trip 9 months ago if I knew only ONE life would be changed?”
My honest answer is yes. If I knew even only one person would commit their lives to Christ for my 11 months of travel and ministry, I would do it all again. It is not easy to see these things, and as much as it hurts, I pray I never become numb to anything I see because that is when there is a problem. The Lord is faithful, and He is using me each and everyday in ways I will never know. He is also using every single person around me to teach me more about Him and draw me closer to Him.
So, as I go into these last 3 months, I pray for all the feels no matter how hard it might be because those are the moments and times I cling to the Lord because nothing else seems right. I pray to continue learning more about Him, more about my role in the Kingdom, and more in how to serve those around me through loving them with God’s love. The one thing I can hold onto is God is good, and even when the enemy is bad, God makes good of all things. I choose to believe that and live my life as if I believe that each and every moment of every single day.
