There are many things about our month in Cambodia that I will never forget.
I will, for instance, never forget the peculiar way that the entire country smells like a smoky backyard barbecue, or that the houses are built on highly-raised stilts so that families can gather underneath the house to stay cool and sheltered from the burning rays of the sun.
I will never forget the smiles on the faces of perpetually naked children as they run happily through dusty streets, nor will I ever forget the almost mechanical sounds of seemingly ancient recordings of Hindu prayers that are broadcasted from megaphones on every street corner at all hours of the day and night.
All of these things were strange and beautiful and when added together, became a huge part of what made Cambodia so unique, so unlike anything I’ve ever seen or experienced before.
But most of all, I think I will remember how I learned a very valuable lesson during the fourth month of my Race, one that has changed and challenged my concept and understanding of love at its very core, and the lesson I learned is that love crosses barriers.
When it comes to crossing cultures, crossing continents, crossing oceans, even, I have learned that love is not something that can be told, or explained.
Love is something that must be shown.
If you take yourself out of your own culture and drop yourself in a completely foreign country, especially one where almost no one in the rural areas speaks your native tongue, you’re going to learn very quickly that in order to survive, you have to rely on something besides the one thing you’ve always been able to rely on: the ability to communicate in your language.
During our month in Cambodia, my team didn’t really do a lot of talking, outside of talking to each other. There wasn’t a wealth of people around to talk with. Not very many people around us spoke conversational English, including the people we saw on a daily basis.
Did this present a unique set of challenges? Yes.
Did this sometimes facilitate confusion and occasionally frustration? Yes.
Did this keep us from falling head over heels in love with the people that we met? Absolutely not.
Did this keep us from being changed and deeply impacted by the lives around us? Absolutely not.
Did this keep us from building relationships with the people that we met? Absolutely not.
Did love cross language barriers? Undoubtedly, unabashedly, unforgettably yes.
One of the most tangible examples of love crossing a language barrier that I want to share with you guys is of the relationship I had with our Cambodian host mom, Channa.
We lived with a crazy-amazing pastor and his crazy-amazing family last month that spoke limited English; Channa, our pastor’s wife, spoke almost no English. I love her dearly, and I’m willing to bet that I love her as much as I do almost because of the fact that we were never able to communicate with our words.
In spite of the fact that our team was responsible for making meals for the month, sweet Channa never failed to share their food with us. She and I could hardly speak a word to each other. Yet in some ways, I have never been made more aware of
someone’s love for me as I was when I saw the acute ways in which she demonstrated her love for myself, and for the rest of my team.
Love crossed barriers whenever she would wordlessly walk into the room, arms laden with a various array of snacks that she would randomly just give to us, smile beaming from her face, and then she would laugh hysterically at our reactions to whatever it was we were eating. (We didn’t usually know.)
Love crossed barriers whenever she would chase us down and randomly slap our shoulders and then shriek with mirth, because she just wanted us to know she cared.
Love crossed barriers whenever she would randomly pull us in for a fabulous selfie.
Love crossed the most heartfelt of barriers when she grabbed my arm during my first visit to the prison, because she knew what it was like to visit a prison for the first time as a woman, and she wanted to show me that she was there for me. We walked through the gate together, her arms tightly woven through mine, even though we couldn’t speak a word to each other. I’ve never understood the heart of someone else as clearly as I did in that moment, despite the fact that she and I have never even had an actual conversation.
Love crossed a multitude of barriers whenever she and I would go on mini adventures to the market after our trips to and from the prison. I would follow her into the dark depths of a massive street market and blindly just trust whatever it was that she put in my hands to carry, as I watched her haggle and joke and laugh with the market ladies. The joy that shone from her eyes was pure beauty as she watched me making an obvious fool of myself, something that was ridiculously fun to do.
Love crossed barriers whenever she would constantly be taking photos of us as we taught English in the evenings in her home, as we played with the crazy beautiful little kiddos on Sunday mornings during Sunday school, as we traipsed all over Phnom Penh with them on our off day, all the while with a touching smile on her face- because I think, running the risk here of sounding too self-important, I think our presence meant a lot to her. I think whatever it was we were doing to help their ministry and their church last month, she needed it.
I think without even knowing it, we encouraged her.
Did love cross that obvious language barrier? Oh man. It definitely did.
Love moved across the barrier of words when tears streamed down her face the morning we left.
Channa loved us very much, and she showed it in some of the most meaningful ways. She made our month so sweet and so special, and I can’t help but recall the true beauty of the gospel in our interactions with her last month.
Love truly is an action, isn’t it?
Love is not now, and never has been, about words, amen?
Christ’s unconditional love for us was made full in the self-sacrificial action of dying on the cross for our sins. He didn’t come to earth just to tell us that God loves us, did He?
He came to earth in the form of a tiny, helpless, flesh-and-blood human baby, lived his entire life on this broken planet, suffered wounds, rejection and hurts from the hands of men and temptations from the hands of the devil, and eventually gave himself up to DIE on the cross to take away our sins. He died on the cross to take away the sins of the entire world.
This was not merely a collection of words about love to try and explain what love means, this was the definition of action at its’ finest, and He did it because He loves us unconditionally.
He always has, He always will.
Love in its purest form crossed the impossible barrier of sin, and love continues to change people’s lives through actions, tangible demonstrations, and physical proof.
While I will always love the little things that made Cambodia so special and unique, the truth is, my memory may fade someday. I may no longer be able to quite recall the way the air smelled, the way the Mekong River looked on a stormy afternoon, or the taste of grilled bananas.
But something I know I will always carry with me that I learned in Cambodia is love has the immense power to cross barriers, and that is something I know I will never loose, because it changed me and change is never retroactive.
