I give up

I’ve been trying for the past several weeks to find the words to explain and understand what our month in Malaysia was like. Like most of us when things happen that just don’t make sense, we sit down and try to fully rationalize and explain everything. It’s hard to grasp the concept that we will never understand the full purpose of what happens no matter how hard we try. It’s like we’re looking at a huge painting from right in the midst of it, we see all the small splotches of color around us. We think that we can arrange these colors to make sense to us (mix the blue and the red over here and get purple), but we fail to realize that we’re only seeing a fraction of the painting.  If we zoom out we’d realize that God is creating this masterpiece and we’ll never really see it, until we’re meant to.

So with all that said… I give up on explaining and understanding…

We started our month living at Rumah Shalom children’s home, a foster home for children whose families had a difficult time supporting them. The beginning of the month was rough. Most of us were too wrapped up in our own personal stuff to realize the opportunity to love the children around us. It took a while but eventually these girls found a way into my heart, my heart hurt for the situation in which they lived and so I gave them the only thing I had to give, but something they so desperately needed – Love…. and then we had to leave them. For a variety of reasons our team had to leave our ministry site over a week early. I was heart-broken, hurt and angry.

I hated leaving the girls early. I hated that there was nothing I could do to help these girls. I knew they were receiving a home, education and food but what they desperately needed was LOVE. They needed to know that they are Worthwhile, Precious, Loved and Deserving of so much better than unhappy home they lived in. I said my tearful good-byes and fought from losing it completely when my precious Catherine hugged me and asked me to come back to her.

Our team of five found ourselves in a sketchy hostel in the Chinatown area of Kuala Lumpur with our squad leaders (Josi had just flown back home to the states after feeling God calling her back, and Kaitlyn had been placed on another team at the end of Thailand). We were a mess, to be honest our team was struggling to love each other, for some reason we couldn’t get it together. It seemed that this month couldn’t get any worse, I was pretty sure that Malaysia was going to go down as the worst month of my race.

Fortunately there was a lot that God showed us during our time in KL…..

We came across an incredible international church in the city. We immediately inserted ourselves into their ministries and discovered what the community of Christ is really meant to be – strangers opening up their homes to us and loving us completely no questions asked.  

Our sketchy hostel grew on me and I was overwhelmed by the opportunities we had with the backpackers we met while there. I started to see just what it means for others to realize that as a Christian there is something different about us. I had the opportunity to respectfully and openly share the Gospel with a Canadian/ Egyptian brother and sister who were Muslim. We found a wonderful Yemeni restaurant where our waiter Majed instantly befriended us. He invited us back, gave us an incredible free meal and spent the evening getting to know us and tell us about his life. In that evening I saw God’s love reflected by this Muslim man more than I have by so many Christians I’ve met.  I saw that my views of the Middle East and Islam have so been marred by what I see on the news and what I’m told as an American. We met an incredible group of Iranian women who loved us immediately wanted us to know that they unlike their government did not hate Americans.

We fell in love with all the wonderful people that God brought into our lives during our time in KL – Cristian and Megan, Parsa, Yashar and Pouria, Alicia, Pastor Dave and Sheryl, and of course Majed. But what’s more is that as a team we started to love each other, we didn’t walk into debrief at the end of the month a perfect team ( that doesn’t really exist), but we came to debrief in a much better place.

However we left debrief on completely different teams. Team Rooted freedom was broken up and each of us was placed on a different team. It was so hard to know that the people I had spent every single day of the last four months with weren’t going to be around me anymore. It definitely made the end of debrief hard, but I know that it’s for the best and I know that God has a purpose in all of this. We each have been placed on incredible teams and I cannot wait to see where we all are at the end of the month. I’ve been placed on team Metanoia with Andrew, Ginelove, Austin, Cassie and Jen. Each of these people are absolutely wonderful and I love them each so much already.

Malaysia was a hard month for me and when I look back I can see that there were reasons for us to spend that final week in KL, but I still don’t fully understand why we went through everything we went through. For once though, I’m perfectly ok not fully understanding everything, I’m not meant to just yet. I know that my time spent in Malaysia taught me a lot and will continue to for a while. I know there was a purpose in everything that happened.

Malaysia is definitely not going down as my worst month on the race, but it certainly wasn’t an easy month, and to be honest I’m glad it wasn’t, I’m glad this month stretched and broke me, I needed it.

-Jess