Mongolia was not an easy month for me. Not that any month is ever easy on the mission field, but going back to conditions where I knew I was going to be roughing it with the whole “manual labor/tenting/no running water or electricity” thing was not easy. After all, the last time I was in these conditions in Africa (see Reflection and Redemption for a recap on that), I had feelings of unworthiness that greeted me every day for a while. I would hate traveling, and then chastise myself for being not “World Race” enough. I would perform at a sub-par level of physicality for our water-hauling, hole-digging ministry and deem myself not “strong” enough. I would be frustrated at a million different things in the combination of forty-something people in one place and feel not “Christian” enough. “Not enough” was a feeling I was familiar with. At that point, I was putting it on like a woman wears an old bra with the underwire sticking out, refusing to throw it away.
My idolatry of perfectionism has been a same old song sung in different variations (see And So He Draws for a poetic recap on that). In Africa, feeling “not enough” was the theme. In Mongolia, “not enough” had faded away, and “spoiler” took its place instead. It wasn’t so much that I believed I fell short of the holy standard. Nope. This time, I believed that I spoiled holiness for everyone else including myself; that I somehow came onto the scene of perfection that God had set and dropped a wine glass on the carpet.
I would watch my team and feel like they would be better off if I weren’t there. They would be able to go faster, further, and accomplish more. They wouldn’t have to cater to things like my motion sickness when we were driving over the rough roads. They wouldn’t have to bear witness to my mosquito-killing rampages in the night or hear me freak out over a spider or a cockroach. They wouldn’t have to carry my load on top of theirs. They wouldn’t have to love me through my high maintenance tendencies. They wouldn’t have to hear me talk about something they haven’t read or watched, and shoot out plot spoilers. I thought that things would be perfect without me – the rotten apple spoiling the bunch.
I remember being told as a kid that I spoiled things. I had poisonous fingers, breaking palms, a stinging touch, a caustic tone, and a chilling look. I would split a table, kill plants, crack plates, shoot dreams, and smash plans. Yet since coming to the Lord, I have seen that from these hands, He can bring life. I have seen it come through on knotted backs, weathered shoulders, and weary necks. Through faith, He restores my touch to restore. Not only that, but from my voice He has brought healing, and from my eyes, love.
Nevertheless at moments this month I bought into the lie that as a daughter, I could spoil what my Father made pure and promised to sanctify – His children. As Paul writes in Romans, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Romans 7:18). I would do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, and none of those things were what I desired in righteousness. I felt like I was delaying and impeding the sanctification that God was trying to do in others through my sin. And of course because of my sin, I thought that sanctification in me clearly wasn’t getting anywhere either. In all this, I would feel even more condemned by the fact that I knew none of these thoughts were true, but I held onto them…in sin.
Thankfully, I read on to Romans 8, which emphasizes that my sin is not greater than my Savior. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:1, 3-4). In sin, I had magnified sin. But every second on earth in His life, Jesus in the likeness of sinful flesh was redeeming me. Every moment of lust overcome. Every temptation to pride won. Every desire for vengeance extinguished. All moments when I have fallen and will fall from birth to death have been redeemed. Any time I have spoken in sin, He had already spoken in perfection. For every sinful thought and deed in my life, Jesus had a righteous one in His life. For all the circumstances through a lifetime for sin to seep through, came the sanctifying lifeblood of Jesus that seeped and coursed through His body to overcome. Every righteous deed of His life washed white every crimson transgression in mine. O great is the blood of the Lamb. Thirty-three years of Jesus is more than enough to cover twenty-three years of me, because the Word become flesh is the infinite in the finite. He was there in the beginning. Sin can be overwhelming, but even my sin has a beginning and an end. Meanwhile, my God has no beginning and no end because He is the beginning and the end – “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8).
The days and moments will come upon me, and there will be times I feel like a broken, incapable mess. But hope is in Christ Jesus, so there is no room to despair in sin. Through eating the Lord’s Supper at His table, we remember His healing. Jesus first breaks the bread, and then drinks from the cup. It is the breaking of the body that comes first, followed by the pouring of the blood. From the brokenness of the body of Christ flows the blood of the covenant that cleanses and redeems. In this way, only from the brokenness of my flesh does His covenant pour forth to purify and sanctify.
From my last blog, you’ll know that I’m not a nature person, but on the last morning of my full day in Mongolia, I decided to take my chances with the bugs. So I watched the sunrise. I gazed upon the beauty of the valley the Lord had led me to. The dawn mercifully shed its light, spreading the corner of my Father’s garment, reminding me that He who wraps Himself in light, wraps me in it also. I wasn’t a spoiler. I was redeemed. Looking up, I could only see the beginning of the too much that was about to wash over me. The rest of the sunrise was too glorious and blinding to behold in the moment. It would have to wait for eternity, while all I could stare into were the effects, pondering the source of it all. As shadows fled the valley, I realized that nothing runs faster from the morning light, and that every day of my life, this happens. The sun always rises. The glory revealed in part but not in whole as I gazed upon the work of His hands throughout His valley, but wait eagerly to gaze upon Him fully. Until then, I can look to see His smile at dawn, His laughter at noon, and His joy in the evening. Always the Lord is with me, and it is my hope as also His will to never leave me, to walk with me, wrestle with me, and lead me into the end of the age. The dew was gathered back up. And so were my tears. Because at the beginning of the day, I could not love Him and not love what He had made.
“One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to imagine inquire in his temple.” Psalm 27:4
