I know it’s been a while, friends. And, I apologize for that.
But—we are in Nepal. The country on top of the world. Home to the Himalayas and Mount Everest. And (in my opinion) one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Granted, I’ve only been to nine countries in my life. But—so far—Nepal takes the cake.
This past weekend, 16 of my squamates and I went on a hike to a mountain outside of Nepal’s capital city of Kathmandu. We spent the first day hiking to the top of this Mt. Chisapani. This included stopping to cool off underneath the curtain of a waterfall along the way. We stayed the night at a tea house at the summit and got to wake up to a view of the sun rising over the Himalayas.
It was straight out of a National Geographic magazine.
It was without a doubt one of the most breathtaking and adventurous weekends of my life.
But, all good hiking trips include some kind of crazy adversity that you have to overcome before you can get back to the bottom. Why should the Himalayas be any different?
It’s okay, though. These obstacles often make for the best of stories.
About halfway into our ascent up Mt. Chisapani on Saturday, the skies began to cloud up. Our guide told us to cover our packs—it was about to be quite the rain shower. So, I put on my rain jacket and put my rain cover on my backpack and continued on the trail. Sure enough, five minutes later the bottom of the sky fell out and enormous raindrops made their way down from the heavens and exploded like bombs onto the bodies of 17 American travelers and their two guides.
But, we hiked on.
The rain continued for what seemed like an eternity. No matter where we were—it found us. It met us on the side of the mountain. It met us in the jungle. We could not escape it.
Finally, though, the sun began to peak its glorious face out from behind the clouds; the rain came to an end. It had had it’s fun with us and had decided to release us from the cover of it’s inescapable blanket.
When we got to a meeting point where we could all take off our jackets and rain covers, the horrifying news broke: we had been attacked by more than just the rain.
Leeches had found us.
The rain had awoken them from their slumber and brought them out—and they were hungry. They latched onto nearly all of us by way of our shoes or our jackets and moved as quickly as they could to the surface of our skin where they could feed on our disturbingly appetizing blood.
By the end of the trip, we had counted up a total of nearly 100 leeches on the 17 of us; I alone had 24.
We were all fortunate enough to remove all the leeches from us by the time we got back to our house in the city; but they still left their mark. I have several round spots on my feet where they had been able to feed for a while before I found them and removed them.
It was quite an experience to say the least.
But, something about these leeches made me think on a level that was a bit deeper than the physical act of having the blood sucked out of my arms and feet.
When any of us would get bitten or sucked on by a leech, something unique would happen. Something very different from a normal mosquito or ant bite. After removing the leech, the blood would continue to flow out like a stream from the place that the leech had been attached. This is due to the fact that when a leech opens up a person’s skin for feeding it secretes chemicals into the person’s blood that prevents clotting. It allows the blood to flow freely into the leech so that it can feed more quickly. When a leech is removed from the skin, the chemicals remain in the blood for some time; so, the blood will keep pumping out of the site until a clot is able to be formed.
Because it may take the body a while to replace the clotting factors that have been killed by the leeches, we have to be active in putting pressure on the wound so that the bleeding will stop while our body rebuilds itself. If we don’t apply the pressure, the bleeding will continue.
This physical phenomenon made me think of how similar this is to our spiritual and emotional lives.
We all have a past. And, I talk in depth about the way our pasts affect us in my last blog titled I’m staying in India. But, today I want to talk a little about the wounds our past leaves with us. Although we are commanded by our Father to forget our past, that doesn’t mean that the wounds go away completely.
And that’s okay.
Our scars make us who we are. They help create the person that God has called us to be in this present moment. But, that doesn’t make them bother us any less.
See, often we are able to remove the things that suck the life out of us, whether it’s an addiction to alcohol or pornography, a fractured relationship that ruined your self-image, a father who was never there for you, or a host of other things. But, although we often separate these things from ourselves, we allow their affect on us to linger for far longer than they need to.
We let the bleeding continue.
But, I give you this hope: it doesn’t have to be this way.
We don’t have to keep bleeding. We don’t have to let this wound keep draining the life out of us.
We can stop the bleeding.
But, it isn’t easy; we have to be willing to apply pressure. Lots of it. And the pressure comes in a form that most of us don’t want to take part in. Especially after we’ve been wounded.
We stop the bleeding by bringing Godly community in; by allowing people into our wound.
I know this sounds hard; and, I won’t sugar-coat it: it is hard. Extremely hard. We don’t want people to get near our wound. For one, it still hurts a little. But, we also don’t want people near our wound because who is to say that they won’t reopen it? How do we know that they won’t take up where the last leech left off? What if they suck more life blood out of us than the original leech did?
These are all valid questions and I think they should be brought up, for sure. But, I want to let you in on a little secret:
it is worth the risk.
It just is.
When other people come in and stop the bleeding and remind you that Jesus is enough and that Godly community is so worth being a part of, you realize that the risk you take by letting them into your wound is nothing compared to the great reward that you will receive in the form of love.
For the longest time, I was afraid to let anyone into my life for the fear that they would irritate one of my old wounds. I didn’t realize then that they were the pressure God had given me. They were what I needed in order to stop the bleeding caused by those leeches all that time ago.
But, once I finally decided to get vulnerable, to open up, to get scary close to these other Brothers and Sisters, I found the wounds finally begin to heal. The bleeding gradually slowed down and eventually came to a complete stop. In its place was just a scar; a reminder of who God has molded me to be through the trials of my life.
This is out there for you, friends.
Find a Godly, Jesus-centered community.
Open up to them.
Let them see your wounds.
Hold onto them tightly.
Press them up against the wounds left by the leeches of your past.
Apply that pressure constantly.
Stop the bleeding.
