I just can't stop.
I think I fall in love every day here…
and I mean really, I give my heart to the people I meet…and then it gets broken.
I almost feel like Viet Nam is like the witch’s house in the woods in Hansel and Gretel for World Racers. We have hot showers, beds (that potentially have bedbugs based on the tiny and suspiciously itchy red bumps I keep finding on my legs…but, you know, it’s not a tile floor crawling with snakes, spiders, rats, and a haze of mosquitos all around), A/C, wifi, a plethora of food options to choose from, and there are English speakers everywhere!
This place seemed like heaven for the first 24 hours we were here…and then I started to dig deeper.
We’ve been spending time with our ministry contacts during the day and hanging out with tourists passing through in the evenings.
"Oh, I just thought I'd spend some time traveling before I settled down."
It's so common, isn't it?
There are even studies that show that younger generations are more likely to be hired for better jobs if they've spent time traveling. The idea of "seeing the world" is just as much, if not more, romanticized as it's always been – but it's easier now than it's ever been before.
Kids want to explore. We start with the darker corners of our own basements and attics, we move up to the limits of our own back yards, then it's building forts in the woods and finding the perfect spot to establish our club-houses under overpasses or in underground tunnels in the neighborhood…
we're still just kids exploring, our playground just got a lot bigger and we can afford plane tickets and we know what hostels are now…so we keep playing, keep searching, keep wandering, keep establishing our secret clubs where we protect the inner-circle of our closest friends to safeguard the wonderfully comfortable and wildly fun communities we've established within them.
It's my generation, it's what we do. We backpack Europe or Southeast Asia, we wine-tour Italy and snorkel/scuba and hike all over Central American Coastlines, we visit Spain to run with the bulls and we wander around Amsterdam to absorb the culture and taste the beers, and we explore Australia mostly just to have friends with cool accents and even cooler stories.
Wine and chocolate in Romania
Koh Chang Island, Thailand
a birthday dinner in Cambodia
We want the kind of memories that will bring back the tastes of that rare fruit and those flavorful cultures to our tongues with a clarity that makes our eyes glisten and our hearts feel full.
I’m convinced that the tourists we’ve had the pleasure of meeting are some of the greatest people in the world.
They’re honest and real and funny and looking to have a good time – they’re the people who step out, the ones who aren’t content to sit at home and do the same thing day after day, the ones who want to see the world and understand what other people believe in and why and how they live their lives, they’re the ones who know there’s more to this life and they’re looking for it…
They sound so much like me, and it’s so easy to relate to them, except for that one Jesus thing, which keeps me fully aware that the “more” they’re looking for can’t be found by simply traveling the world.
My last night out with friends in DC before the race.
The transcendental experiences, the night life of various cities all over the world, the hook-ups, pool games, dance clubs, and nights of great conversation are okay fillers; but what does that change once the night is over? Or once it’s time to go home, what’s different? How much more full are they really?
They look for friendship, for connections, for community, for people to have a good time with – for affection, for pleasure…but it’s so temporal.
I want desperately to be able to offer them that one thing that WILL give them more, and not just in a temporary sense, but forever – but it’s delicate, and more than wanting to convert them on the spot (which would make me feel like a vampire-zombie trying to build an army), I just want to love them, and love them well, and I'm afraid I haven't been doing that so well.
…and to be honest, it breaks my heart.
The first night I went out in Viet Nam to hang out with the "we" that makes up my traveling generation, I just felt helpless. I ran out of cash, so one of my new friends offered to buy me a beer, and I wanted so badly to respond in some magically perfect combination of words that would tell him all about how he's made in the image of a living God who wants him to know everything he was created for – which is to be fully known and loved and to wake up every day feeling fully alive,
I wanted him to know that Jesus isn't about rules or religion or Bible-thumping, but He's about love and laughter and light and wholeness and community – all the things the tourists we've met all over the world seem to be searching for – but that response wouldn't communicate love at all because our western world is so wounded by religion…
I didn't know how to tell him how perfect he is, so I just said I'd love a beer, thanked him, and continued to make small-talk.
heartbroken on the inside, because I'd fallen IN LOVE with him – but fully engaged in conversation about everything other than what I wanted to tell him on the outside, because I didn't know what else to do.
That's obviously not a ministry night I'm proud of, the Bible is pretty clear that I'll be given words to speak and that I'm to speak them with authority when I follow the Spirit, but I had my back turned…
I find myself so overwhelmed by my own inability sometimes that I forget to depend desperately on the Spirit within me that can accomplish all the things my heart wants but my mind is incapable of…
and a lot of my ministry this month is going to be relational – it's going to be conversations, coffee, going for walks, getting lunch, and loving the people I have the opportunity to meet for the full length of time that I get the opportunity to love them.
So, would you partner with me? Would you pray for my words, for my heart, and – more importantly – for the hearts of the incredible people I'm meeting? Pray for liberation, for love to reign and for peace to become a reality for these people from the inside out.
Papa knows exactly what He's doing in this nation, and it's powerful. This place is alive and I keep falling head-over-heels in love with person after beautiful person!
