Since setting foot back on American soil after being in the Tacloban, in the Philippines, I knew right away. I was wrecked for average everyday living. I kept thinking about Aliza Mae, and how she is such a smart little girl, how beautiful her voice is—and how no one ever tells her these things. I miss the salty lukewarm ocean complete with jellyfish. The nightly conversing of the near plague of frogs that would emerge. The children yelling, “ate, ate!” (sister) to me when they came to play. And never having a vacant hand, or back for that matter when they were around. I have been waking up every morning since, in Illinois, knowing the vast need for difference makers, kingdom builders, broken ordinary soldiers—I’ve been thinking usually with a deep sigh, “if I woke up a missionary every morning, I would face the day with ambitious joy, knowing each moment and breath was another shout out to Jesus”. I think, I could do that for the rest of my life, but now I’m here. In a land of iPads, Twitter, and apathy—where the biggest troubles are what we would call “first world problems”. I keep hearing myself think, “if I could only be THERE.” As if Jesus was more real there, as if I need a typhoon or an impoverished country to be a ‘missionary’. Hold up. Excuse me Kathleen. Whatever made you think that job ended when you got home? Just because the mess, the sounds smells and sight, of brokenness are different doesn’t mean the need is any less. That kingdom building only exists where there are shanty-houses, mass graves, and beautiful filthy children are—is a blatant lie. It’s just a different mess here. Our problems are in our excess, in our worship of anything other than God, in our comfort. Light bulb. Not only can I wake up everyday a missionary, but I need to be waking up everyday as a missionary. Because there are hopeless here, there is spiritual destitution here, there is a pursuit of something to fill the soul. And most days that pursuit lands on achievements, or money, alcohol, drugs, sports—which promises to fill a hole it can’t. Truthfully, most days the trenches here scare me more than robbery, Dengue Fever, Jellyfish, Lice. Because we have been burnt and bittered by who we think God is or by religion, we’ve become apathetic because the world has so many problems how on earth could we dent the stack, we’ve allowed the enemy a foothold to numb us to brokenness, vulnerability, evangelists, missionaries. People in other countries die of civil war, illness, poverty, starvation. AND that’s why we go. To share Jesus, the only solution. But people here are dying too—of numbness, affluence, and comfort. We’re being drowned in ignorance disguised as fortune. I didn’t stop being a missionary when I left the Philippines. Thats were I started. I’m glad I got the wake-up call, 911 to be exact, we’re needed here too. By no means at all am I undermining going to the nations, it was and is the best thing I’ve ever done—and it is needed desperately. I have never been more excited than I am now for the World Race. People need to know Jesus. Many times in other countries they don’t even get that shot. Here in the states we send missionaries out all the time to satisfy needs, but they’re needed here too. This is one of the most faithfully underserved nation of the world, we’re so easily satisfied with the fruits and offerings of the world, we don’t even want eternity.
