As our group prepares to go out on the bar street for the first time, I feel solemnity overtake me. I know God has given me a gift for being very sensitive to spiritual atmospheres, and I know tonight is going to be hard. Though we have been praying and worshipping for more than an hour beforehand, I feel heaviness as I walk down the street. I’m with Kyle and Emily, the two of us girls sandwiching him in to somewhat protect him for the eager cries and invitations of the bar girls. I feel a pang of pride that I get to protect him a little since Kyle has been a pillar of strength for me at training camp and on the Race. It’s nice to return the favor. We walk to the end of the street and I watch as countless tourists are happily drinking beers and flirting with the Thai bar girls. I see the eager looks in the men’s eyes, and actively pray against feeling anger towards them for what they are about to do. We turn and go back down the other side, and I’m praying and singing to myself the whole way. I feel something every time I see a bar girl with a customer. A very real, very sharp pain surges through my heart, and I know I’ve felt the feeling somewhere before, but I can’t quite remember when or where.
We stop halfway down the street to debrief, and Kyle and Emily talk about how it’s so important for us to be joyful, and have a good time. People aren’t going to be drawn to us or think we are different if we just walk down the street looking like we’re about to burst into tears any second. No one will want to be friends or talk to us if we have judgmental scowls on our face all the time. I completely agree with this, and silently pray for God to take away the heaviness. We go into a bar and meet a girl named Pat, and she’s so young and sweet. We play pool and talk to her as best we can, and leave feeling pretty accomplished. I left with a relatively light heart and feel fine until we pass a bar where a scantily clad girl is sitting on a white man’s lap, and he’s telling her he will have to come back for her the next night because the bank was closed today. Wrenching pain courses through me, my head jerks around and my body tenses. Kyle is walking behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder to comfort me.
When we get back and debrief as a group, most people talk about how they feel joy and happy and how they don’t even see them as “bar girls” or “customers” just people who all need to know the Father’s love. I think this is incredible and exactly what this ministry needs, the true joy of God! The only problem is I don’t feel joy when I’m out there. I start to realize what God meant when He told me I wouldn’t go into the bars. I was called to stay behind and intercess for those who could be joyful.
For the first week I gladly stayed behind and prayed. It was incredible. It came so naturally to me and even though it was three solid hours of constant prayer, the time flew by. God’s word started to come alive to me, and I began to feel Him like never before. I still felt heaviness on the street during morning prayer walks though, and while others could feel light and joyful, somehow I just couldn’t.
“God, why am I so different? Why do I only see darkness? Am I focusing on it? Am I giving the enemy too much credit? Why can everyone else feel joy, while all I feel is so much pain?”
I didn’t really get an answer. So, I decided to go out again. I didn’t want to use intercession as a crutch, just because I hated feeling heavy. I wanted to make sure that was really where God wanted me, that I wasn’t just hiding away. So that night I went out with Kyle, Emily and Kaitlyn to the bar we went to that first night to visit Pat. I tried so hard to be joyful and happy, but the heaviness was still there and that horrible feeling returned every time I saw a Thai girl with a white man. We reached the bar and ordered Cokes and sat down to wait for Pat since she wasn’t there. As I sat watching the activity on the street it suddenly hit me what the feeling was and where I had felt it before.
It was the feeling you get when you get dumped. When someone breaks up with you, when you feel unwanted, discarded, unloved.
Why that feeling? Why God? Why are you allowing me to feel this? Why?
I was in tears as I told the other three what was going on in my heart, and that I didn’t really know what it meant or why I was feeling it, but I knew that that’s exactly what it was. Then Kyle said something I hadn’t thought of before. He said God was allowing me to feel how He felt. That kind of stopped my “whys”. The pain that I was feeling was a gift, a connection to our Fathers heart, it’s how He feels every time we go astray, every time we seek fulfillment in anything besides Him.
I sat processing this the rest of the time we were there. I really had never even considered that God felt that way before. It makes sense, He gave us the gift of Choice, He wants us to choose Him, and when we don’t it hurts Him. I don’t know why this was so revolutionary to me, it just was. I glanced at the ceiling and noticed that one of the little lizards that are everywhere in Thailand was directly above my head. I smiled because I knew it was God confirming my feelings to me. I love those lizards, they’re super cute and remind me of my family. As weird as it sounds, I knew God sent that little lizard to comfort me, to let me know He was with me, and it stayed there directly above us until we left.
I walked back to Zion thanking God that I’m “different”, that I got to share a little piece of His heart, and no longer questioning my role as an intercessor. My job is to lift others up as they flood that dark street with light and joy, because I know the Fathers heart and the love and pain He feels for His lost children in a way no one else does.
