Hello there,
It’s been a while. Miss me?
I’ll admit, I missed me for a little bit.
With the loss of my computer I’ve found it much easier not to talk to people outside of my WorldRace sphere than to make the effort of borrowing people’s technology, battling wifi, and working around time differences. (I’m still waiting to branch out to FB until the end.)
As I look at the list of Blog titles/ideas I’ve been jotting down for the past month or 2 I amusingly don’t want to start with any of them. I do plan on writing quite a bit while in Japan next month. It’s looking like it’ll be a big processing/ transition month. But I won’t make empty promises and we’ll just hope for the best.
When I thought about the fact you all haven’t heard from me in about 2 months, I’ve been thinking about the best way to fill you in on where I’ve been and where I’m at now. There’s always a lot to say about the physical of where I am and the adventures I get to partake in as well as our monthly ministry and all the amazing people I encounter. But really, what always takes president for me is always the spiritual journey. It’s what takes the most energy, effort, time, prayer, etc. And ultimately it’s the most meaningful and rewarding part of this whole thing.
So how do I let you in on that? The answer came to me in the form of my weekly C and C’s (Challenges and Celebrations). Every week we send in a sort of progress report to our leaders, mentor and coaches for them to see what’s going on and how they can pray for us. This week’s was a big one. And I felt like God was putting it on my heart to share it with ya’ll. I edited it a smidge for clarity’s sake but as always, I’m open to any questions and am more than happy to clarify where things look confusing.
Here it goes~
A week or 2 ago my team and I had one of the most honest and (to me) helpful feedbacks we’ve ever had… And one of the only feedbacks where people actually said stuff in quite a while. It was so helpful in that it shook we out of what had been a solid month of not talking to pretty much anyone about the deep waters of my heart. Or talking to people much at all. I got feedback about being closed off from the team in China (which I was, willfully because at that point I’d given up hope of trusting my team with my heart fully. I hadn’t realized it yet, but I hadn’t trusted this team with true openness ever. (I’ll pick this back up in a sec.)
Sunday or Monday last week God started pestering me about opening up my heart more to Him. I did and He replied with, “No really, open up your heart to me.” This started a conversation debating what the hell it meant for me to open up my heart to Him and my not believing there was anything I could do to make myself more open. I got the ominous feeling He had something to show me. With 2 weeks left I didn’t think I could handle breaking again in the way seeing a resurfaced memory breaks me. At this point I’d actually had an amazing 3-4 days and realized I hadn’t had a full week without some crap like this pop up the entire Race (at least since Nepal, which was month 2 when repressed memories started coming up). So I begged Him for a week. Just one week to be fun and somewhat, relatively easy. He didn’t seem satisfied with that so I found myself on the roof daring Him to hit me with whatever He had. So I’d end the Race more broken than I started it. Whatever it took to be in His will. I ended up sitting there for a good 15 minutes in mind wandering silence… and then I fell asleep.
We took a trip to a Pastoral Conference to spread the word about WorldRace Korea. It was crazy fancy (even according to non-Racers), our contacts blessed us continually (which was beautifully humbling) and we had a great time traveling with them. I actually noticed more color in the world and more songs in my heart than I’d noticed in months. I got my week.
I don’t remember what actually triggered me deciding to sit down and hardcore process. I didn’t really know the root of what was unsettling me but I was determined to sit down and write it all out. Then Ash walked into the room
and agreed to be my sound board. I poured out my guts and all the little truth nuggets I was chewing on, trying to decipher how they connected. It was the most open and honest I’ve been with Ash since Cambodia. (After my first outpour of words she actually said, “Welcome back!”) We spent about 3 hours digging through it all, spiraling down until we pegged it on the head. I’ll give you the jist of it:
In both Cambodia and Vietnam my team and I ended with conversations that left me feeling caught and caught by surprise (both are a terrible feeling for me resulting from hiding and being literally caught and abused as a child). This was a huge part of me walking into my next team with an unforeseen wall of distrust.
Also, coming into Vietnam God took Japan off our route. This was earth shattering for me. Not just because I freaking LOVE Japan and feel called there, but because in a lot of ways feel like I AM Japan. (I relate with their spiritual/ emotional struggles.) Thus why I fight for it. Fighting for the vision God’s given me of Japan’s redemption gives me hope for mine. So it didn’t just feel like God stopped fighting for Japan. It felt like God stopped fighting for me. So deep down I stopped trusting Him to fight for me in that area and focused more on fighting for myself…and Japan. I made some sudden rash decisions (none of which I regret but they were pretty big ones)… Then I almost died from a freak coat hook accident. I knew the whole time I wasn’t going to die- that my time wasn’t up here. But I sure felt how close I got. That month held the most intense, lengthy physical pain I’ve experienced in my entire life. And that was the month my team stopped fighting for each other. I felt completely alone. I fought really freaking hard to stay in the game but that was probably the “worst” month of my Race.
Then we changed teams (well, half changed). I hid in my bunk the entire week we were paused in KL, Malaysia and grieved what felt like an internal death. It felt like something deep inside me was dead. And I got the tattoo I’d been wanting since the end of Nepal because I wanted something beautiful and meaningful to come out of pain. Then, in what I’m now seeing as a spiritual attack, my inner “throne room” was defiled with unpleasant and sexual images. From that point on, what has always been my place of safety and comfort- no matter what hardship was outside it- was “ruined.” The place where I could ALWAYS find Jesus (I’d never gone to my throne room and not seen Him there), has been empty ever since. I can remember past exchanges but He hasn’t come back in all 4 months since. I felt officially alone spiritually and no longer perceived I had a single “safe” place.
So in the Philippines I tried to make one. I took comfort in the renewed “depth of friendship” with some teammates and hope of a future depth of community with the others. I was holding onto the threads of hope of community being something I could trust. But as things usually go when you put your hope solely in humans, they inevitably fail you (I don’t mean that cynically. It just is that way). And then God decided it was time to give me part 2 of memory recovery which shattered my perception of what it meant to be loved.
And then there was Mongolia. Mongolia was being hurt. Mongolia was grieving and feeling all the aloneness and hurt that I wouldn’t acknowledge before then. I fully gave up on community at large, only shared with my team out of obligation of information, and no longer found it enough when God showed me a memory, showing me where He was in that moment. It wasn’t enough to know He was with me because He still didn’t stop it from happening while knowing what it would do to me- while knowing what REMEMBERING would do to me. I was pretty bitter and cynical with a giant feeling of betrayal sitting on life.
Even now I don’t think I could have done China differently other than letting people in on things. There was nothing to do but sit in all the mess. There was one specific set of off days I spent isolating myself in my room. I went out to pick up food and that was it. (I don’t even want to know how many snickers and cokes I had last month). Otherwise I was praying, stewing, crying, journaling and reading. (I read 2 books during those 2 days- about a third of what I’ve read on the entire Race.) One of the times I went out all I could feel was how empty life was without being able to trust God. Outloud, in China, I asked Him to kill me or help me get past this betrayal thing. Because I can’t live like that. I can’t live feeling betrayed and abandoned by God, no matter what I “know” and “believe.”
So He brought me to this month. He brought me to conversations and situations and little tangents and nuggets of truth that slowly unwedged the door of my heart. And all that time of not verbal processing had built up and the dam exploded with all the ugly and beautiful truth pouring out: I don’t trust God. At the end of the day He feels like my enemy who has ruined me and “turned me into terrible person with a terrible past.” (Because before the Race, I thought I had gotten my act together pretty good. My spiritual “resume” was solid and now I could help people. Oh, boy was I off!) His identity was split in 2; with who I used to know Him to be before (who I “knew” and “believed” He was) and who I currently saw Him as (who I felt He was). And thus I was also split in 2; with who I was before everything (the girl who wanted to bring the hope and healing she had received to Japan and the world) and the girl who wasn’t who she thought she was and had a different past than she thought she had (the girl who still was hurt and needed healing).
That’s the jist of things- most of which I shared with the whole team the next day. It was a lot. It took forever. But I got the most helpful responses and encouragement I’ve received in a long time and finally felt like I was BACK- to the team and myself.
Since that talk with the team God has been super faithful. He gave me a vision of being at final debrief, plastered on the floor with my hands out and flat on my face. I was sobbing like crazy and LETTING GO of EVERYTHING. It looked like a moment of total surrender and I just knew something awesome would follow. I’ve decided to hope for that.
Because I want to seek God just because I want to seek Him, not for the purpose of what He might give me (which has been the case for the past several months). I want to be completely open to Him and stop fighting Him. I really do want Him to hold me and just give in to it. Somehow I don’t know how to do that yet. So I’m hoping for final debrief. And if He’ll show me how to do that sooner, I’m SO game for that. Why wait another week if I can do that now. I’m hoping for next week and I’m hoping for today. I might not go home “whole” in the way I had wanted to, but I’m going to go home (and into Japan) better than I would have if this was all in my hands.
~And there it is.
I know it’s super long. I have a lot of words and when God’s revealing things, it’s hard pick and choose what to include- it’s all important to me. But excuses aside, I’m posting all of it simply because this is me and I’m done hiding pieces of myself.
So farewell for now. I look forward to being more social with ya’ll and getting to hear about your year’s.
I love you all SO very much and hope you have a splendid day~
