Ok, let me paint a picture for you of my day today…actually, let me preface this by saying that I’ve been sick for the last three days with fever and crazy allergies. I’m not gunna lie, it’s hard being sick away from home, especially when everyone else gets to play with cute African kids all day while you count the bricks on the wall and have the chills! Ok, so today I was feeling a little bit better (or I was just going crazy in the house and needed to walk a longer distance than just to the bathroom), so I went to work on a project I heard about from the ladies who work here. The project was placing reinforcement stickers around the holes at the top of these little bags that say “Exotic Spices” on them. The women get a certain amount of money for every box of bags that is finished. That money is used for the kids who live here at Refilwe.
So, I walk into the admin office this morning and one of the ladies gives me a quick demonstration and then leaves me to it. The room I’m in is freezing (it’s been about 40 degrees Fahrenheit here every day) and has black bars over the windows. It’s in the back of the office, away from any people. So, I sit on the floor in the sunlight and get started. It seems like mindless work, and to be honest, it was all I had energy for.
After a few hours of this, however, I realize a few things: doing this makes my whole body ache after a while because I’m hunched over, I haven’t talked to anyone for like 5 straight hours, I feel like I’m 80 years old because my joints are getting stiff from the cold, I sort of feel like a prisoner in some weird labor camp, and God has a sense of humor! I mean, here I am, unable to work with the kids, which is what I want to do, I’m away from my team and am missing out on all the fun, and I’m in what seems like some little dungeon room placing thousands of stickers on these little bags! Ok, maybe you had to be there, but it was funny to me.
It just proves again that God is up to something in my life. He’s got me behind the scenes, which is so foreign for me. And to top that all off, since I’ve been sick, I almost feel invisible! It’s all the devil just trying to get me down, but I have really had to fight off self pity with this whole sickness thing. I mean, I’ll be on the top bunk in my little quarantine room, listening to everyone else having fun in the living room, and then the enemy will start whispering his stupid lies. “Poor you, you’re sick and no one even cares! No one has come to check on you in so long. Don’t they know you have a really high fever right now?” And that’s how it starts. And if I let those thoughts sit in my mind for too long, they could turn into resentments. Luckily, my God is bigger than all of this. And He’s helping me.
So, welcome to my life as of right now. It’s fun, and hard, and constantly changing, and so amazing. God is teaching me to die to myself at greater levels every day. I have to lay my rights down to follow Him. The right to be taken care of, the right to be offended, the right to be comfortable. If I am truly dead to my flesh, nothing should be able to bother me. Hard to remember sometimes, but so key if I want my life to be fully used for God’s glory.
Ok, God…I’m in 100%. If I can bring You glory by sitting on the floor in some back room placing stickers on little bags, I will do it. You are worth it.
