Weariness. If I’m honest, that is what I feel right now; weariness mixed with sadness. When I sit in comfort or I lay in bed at night I begin to remember parts of my past year. There are so many good things to remember, so many victories, so many joys, so many amazing ways we saw the Lord move, but we have also seen more than our fair share of hurt, suffering, sickness, and loss. I don’t know what to do with what I’ve seen except to remember and cry.
I have felt a weight of sadness recently, especially this month. It isn’t all the time, but I keep telling the Lord that I have seen enough. I don’t want to see any more people living in trash, I don’t want to pray for any more poor people who are sick, I don’t want to meet any more orphans who are not being cared for and are being mistreated.
When I think about what I’ve experienced this past year I think of it in segments separated by month. I remember the desperately poor in The Philippines who live and work and go to school in the trash (October); I remember crowds of people in China who when asked individually thought Jesus was a new celebrity or a new brand of soap (November); I remember street children in Kenya sniffing glue to ease their hunger pains and an entire community shrouded in fear from the violence they had endured (December); I remember stories of friends in Uganda who had suffered much and teeny-tiny babies with AIDS fighting for their lives (January); I remember looking into the eyes of dozens of people afflicted and possessed by demons in Tanzania, only some of which were completely freed (February); I remember befriending former sex slaves in India who were sold by their families and seeing women and eunuchs who were still enslaved (March); I remember feeling the recent oppression of communism in Ukraine and the poverty and sadness it left behind (April); I remember women in Romania being mistreated and overlooked, and a beautiful friend being left by her husband a few days after I met her (May); I remember walking alongside a dear friend in Slovakia as she lost a baby and the dismay I felt at being back in a culture that has so much material wealth that they think they have no need for the Lord (June).
This month as we are in Guatemala faces and situations are still fresh in my mind. We have visited people in a dump and brought them food; we have prayed for people with all kinds of ailments that live in terrible situations (the most pressing on our hearts is a woman named Mary – she seems to be getting better but the Lord hasn’t completely healed her yet), and we have been spending a lot of time at an orphanage that is owned by a man who has little interest in the children’s well-being.
And then I remember that all of these “experiences” I have had are realities that continue to exist day in and day out, only I am no longer in them. I don’t know what to do with all of these things except to bear them and try to release them to the Lord.
Sometimes I want to question if God is good, but I know He is, and He is the only reason I can move forward. He is my JOY, and it is His LOVE that compels me forward, so forward I go.
