All I knew about Unsung Heroes was enough to know I never wanted to spend a month of my Race doing it.
This was a thought that raced through my mind as my new team leader, Anna, read off our ministry set up sheet for our month in Malaysia. Which promptly told us absolutely zilch because we did not have a ministry we were partnering with. We would be doing Unsung Heroes.
My heart sank like a massive iron anchor straight to the bottom of the ocean it was dropped in.
At launch, back in September, they did a very brief session explaining what UH was. Essentially what I got from that session was there was no assurance or security in anything. We would be dropped off in the country where you did not know where you would be sleeping, what you would be doing daily, or even what city of the country you would be in. Nothing.
Back then I did not realize it, but what really was going on was that I wanted nothing to do with a lack of security or the unknown.
We had our month 7 debrief at the beginning of it, so Malaysia represented the end of a season of my Race. We had team changes and I said goodbye to Team Haya and the beautiful women I had done a sweaty mess of life with the previous three months.
Including Catherine, the caramel to my vanilla, who I had not gone a day in seven months without seeing. Someone who had been there with me since the beginning, who knew how I ticked and what I needed in order to be challenged.
Now, who would know the magnitude of what it meant for me and celebrate when I finally learned vulnerability? And more importantly, who would eat the yolk part of my hard boiled eggs?
With this new team though, I felt elated. With Team Raising the Bar (RTB) I felt the freedom these women would help me claim and the joy they would daily fill my heart with. Whatever ministry would come our way, I could face and choose to thrive in because I had them by my side to finish out my last season on the Race.
Then our ministry sheet read in ominous bold black lettering, UNSUNG HEROES, and my brief elation was replaced with instant dread.
All I could think of was a month with nothing secure or sure. A month where there was not structure or schedule. A month where everything was going to be chaotic and frustrating.
But the Lord had different plans.
Instead of a month of chaos, His plans were for a month of fully and completely trusting Him and letting go of my own carefully laid out agenda.
And what better way to do it than with an entire month of the unknown. Where there was no way to come up with a set agenda.
Unsung Heroes are the ministries and individuals who are working with Kingdom purposes that an Adventures in Missions team could potentially come and work alongside. A month on the Race of doing Unsung Heroes as our ministry means we got to be a team of people who went looking for new ministries for AIM to partner with.
We were to move to any city within the country we felt the Lord was calling us to and talk to anyone we felt He was leading us to. So, we began our month in the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.
When doing a month of Unsung Heroes, at the beginning, it is a lot of internet searches, e-mails and phone calls to people we were not even sure spoke our same language, and waiting.
Waiting on responses to our e-mails, waiting for meetings with potential new hosts, and waiting on the Lord to bring us the people He had set out for us to meet before we even signed up for the Race.
For me, personally, that waiting was my own personal impatient Hell.
Until this month I did not realize my expectations for what God was supposed to do for me on my Race. I came to realize, at this point I expected God to have done some huge miracles right in front of my eyes.
You know, make a lame man get off his mat and walk, give a blind man sight with a little mud, feed the five thousand with two fish and five loaves biblical kind of stuff.
And I expected to be used to do it. I expected my hands and words to do the healing.
But instead, Jesus wanted to spit in some dirt and rub it on my own blind eyes to restore my sight.
His purpose for me in this month of uncertainty was to show me how much more I needed to learn to consistently trust Him. He needed to get me to where I had no control whatsoever to even try and claim.
And this is where I met Him.
When you are at the end of yourself, and you step out of your own way, is where God can finally do His work.
Bringing security and peace alongside the unknown and the uncertainty of it all.
Saliva mud on eyes kind of work.
