The world race takes your privacy away faster than anything else I have experienced. Alone time does not come easy, and it is something that you have to fight for every day. Living in constant community with others is a choice and it is one you have to make every day.
I have experienced days where I didn’t want to get out of bed, I didn’t want to speak to anyone around me, where I was just ready to go home and be in my old apartment, alone. But that’s the enemy attacking, that the enemy trying to tell me that I shouldn’t work this hard to grow meaningful and loving relationships. That I should only worry about myself and not building relationships with others. But that is not what God wants us to do, that is not what’s right, what is biblical. God calls us to first love Him and then to love others. We were made to seek others, everyone was made to desire relationships, growth, and community. And to not work towards that is against our natural instinct. It is the enemy attacking and us falling into the trap that we matter more than others, that our privacy is the most important thing.
This last month I had the opportunity to visit two different remote villages in India, each being around 900-1000 in population. Arriving to these villages you would have thought we went back 100 years in time, just add in periodic electricity and motorcycles. Everyone in the village was aware that we were there and the home we were staying welcomed us with open arms and an open table. They served us so well, they served us better than I have ever been served or served someone myself. It was eye opening how much love they poured into us, when they didn’t even know anything about us other than that we were there to help them in whatever they asked us to do.
They fed us, helped us with laundry, made sure we had enough water, when they saw we were hot they would come over and fan us (even when we said no, 100 times), they offered seconds, thirds, and fourths during every meal. Their first instinct is to serve and to do it without expectations of anything in return, it is in their second nature to help others even when they need help themselves. They put others first before themselves in everything they did.
It was heartbreaking watching them, experiencing this, and then thinking about the way we live in the U.S.. The way we have been told since childhood that you matter more than others, that you need to take care of yourself first, that your personal growth is your one and only priority. That to be truly successful you have to be selfish to get there. It’s crazy because that is not what God has called us to do, that is not what the Bible is about at all. The Bible is about love, the love that God has for you, the love that we have for God, and the love that you are called to have for others. But we avoid it every day, we avoid the hard conversations, we avoid failure. We are afraid to say the wrong thing, to rock the boat, the make a mistake and to have to face it. So we avoid community and relationships all together because to have a healthy relationship all of those things have to happen.
This month really made me look at the way I serve others and though I love to serve at times I can still be selfish in the way I serve and when I choose not to completely. I am walking away from month 4 with a new sense of service and what that really looks like. A new outlook on what privacy is and how much of it you really need. A new excitement for getting out of my comfort zone and talking about the hard stuff, facing your feelings with others and letting them speak into them from their perspective.
Month 5 in Nepal comes with a lot of changes, we are finding out who our new teams are this week. We are getting an entire new group of 6 people to do life with for the next 6 months. I am excited for this change and sad to leave my old team. I know God has so much planned for these next 6 months and he is going to work in my new team in ways that we would have never dreamed.
My new team is a group of 6 beautiful women who are on fire for Christ and doing what he asks. We are team “Branded – Identity Seared” because we are branded by Gods truths and we find our identity in him.
“Henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus”. – Galatians 6: 17
