The first sentence is always the hardest.
This one is especially hard because the last time I updated this blog was in Thailand. Three-and-a-half months ago! If it’s any consolation, I feel plenty sheepish about the whole business. Still, I’m trusting in your vast capacity for graciousness—please don’t hold my tendency for lapsing into long intervals of silence against me too terribly.
Let’s address Thailand first, yeah.
Thailand is my most difficult month yet, and even though we have five more months ahead of us, I anticipate that it will continue to feature as one of the hardest times of my Race.
Someone told me recently that cats have this unique ability of draining negative energy from people, and although I’m disinclined to believe such paper-thin mysticism, I feel it necessary to relate it because the streets of Chiang Mai too have a singular ability to drain a person of all good humor. Oh, they’ll give you a great impression of happiness, but hold that up to the light and it immediately disintegrates.
The spiritual darkness and heaviness is palpable. All manner of grotesque and fantastic creatures line the streets. They accost you with gargoyled snarls on your way in and cling to your fingers like greasy residue on your way out.
All month long, I wrestled with debilitating feelings of loneliness in addition to physical illness, first a sinus situation and soon after a boisterous stomach bug. I suffered a constant deluge of spiritual attacks while I dreamt and in my waking moments. Things I thought I had put to rest were suddenly major problems in my life. I wrote such morbid, angsty things in my journal as …
I feel very lonely here … I’m wearied out just thinking about the effort I’ll need to expend to make myself known to my squad mates … I’m hounded by their faces; I’m jealous of the easy way they all seem to be getting along and finding one another. But I don’t know how to be part of that. I’m not even sure I want to be part of it.
… and
Sitting by myself here I’m at once relieved and sad—relieved to be by myself and sad to be by myself.
Over and over, the enemy’s onslaught came. With unrelenting violence it came, bent on stealing from me, destroying me, and killing me. And I almost believed he would crush me.
Almost.
In those first few days.
I felt such hopelessness, and even rehashing it now for the purpose of this blog is creating a damper over me …
One night (on February 23, according to my journal), one of our alumni squad leaders, Erin, gave me this account of a vision she had for me. Here’s how it appears in my journal:
I am standing on what looks like an unfinished dock. Or perhaps it is a bridge because as she watches I start to pick up wood and hammer it to the end of my unfinished dock/bridge. All around me people are running to what’s on the other side of the water, and they are not building bridges. They’re just running on the surface of the water. As I watch them do this, I get really frustrated and double my efforts to finish my bridge so I can get to the other side as well. But no matter how hard or how fast I hammer, I’m not getting there. Instead, I’m getting more frustrated and distraught as the others pass me easily.
This vision was not comforting to me at all. And I was upset about it for days because it compounded the general feelings I’d been having of “not getting it” and “missing the memo everybody else got on truly knowing and being known by God.” After pouting about it for a couple of days, I talked to Katie (another one of our alumni squad leaders) about it, and here’s what I had to say in my journal about the new perspective she offered:
She suggested that perhaps the dock was just that—a dock. I’d just assumed I was building a bridge because I kept adding to the end of it. Erin didn’t actually say I was building a bridge, just that I was adding on to it, sometimes frantically as I watched others streak past me. Katie says I shouldn’t worry about the ones running past me because that takes my eyes off what is on the other side, and what is on the other side is where my focus needs to be. She says my dock is almost finished, and any moment now I’ll jump off it and maybe start swimming before I start running on the water. Or maybe I’ll just drop in and immediately start running. Who knows?!
As Katie spoke, I remembered back to a few days before when I had been praying and asking God for something, anything. I looked up at a wall I’d been staring at day in, day out and noticed for the first time an inscription that said, “Be still. I am fighting for you.” I thought of that, and I thought of the dock/bridge. I thought about the enemy and considered how his whole campaign to snatch us out of the Lord’s sheep fold is founded on us believing the lies he feeds us and wrecking ourselves as a result. I thought about the uncompromising faithfulness of God. I thought about being still and what that looked like for me practically. And I resolved to believe God, to believe the things He says of me, to believe in the victory He’s already won over the enemy, to believe in His process. I resolved to seek His help in being surrendered to Him daily. And I resolved to trust Him.
It didn’t get easier because when you persist in pushing back darkness, it has a vain habit of pushing right back. But I had my fight back, which made all the difference.
I want to leave you with this quote that comforted me some during that period. Allow it to saturate your whole spirit and soul wherever and whenever you are.
“You may fear that the Lord has passed you by, but it is not so: he who counts the stars, and calls them by their names, is in no danger of forgetting his own children. He knows your case as thoroughly as if you were the only creature he ever made, or the only saint he ever loved. Approach him and be at peace.”
– Charles Spurgeon
