[Exactly
what the title says (and no, it’s not because I threw up my dinner
last night): this blog might not make any sense at all. It will
probably be messy with no navigation of my brain. It’s probably not
going to have the kind of depth I know a lot of people are asking me
to share right now. And it might be all over the place.
…but
that’s kind of what my life looks like right now too…unorganized,
messy, not making much sense.
WARNING:
This is a long blog
with real feelings and uncomfortable truths. Read at your own risk!]
Things are
slower than we expected this month with ministry, but it’s like I,
myself, can’t seem to slow down. My thoughts and emotions race
through my mind every second of every day. I
can’t seem to write a decent blog because there’s too much all the
time, and I don’t know how to
unload my life extravagantly to everyone. I
feel suffocated in a house full of 14+ people, and I
can’t always battle the Enemy when he’s at work in our house, in our
team, in our ministry etc. I left
what’s been so familiar to me for so long and still have not
processed it fully. Dang, will I
ever process it fully? Probably not.
I
feel like I‘ve lost who I’ve
become. I‘m not sure who
I am in this new, strange place. I’ve
been quiet, reserved, keeping to myself almost all the time.
Sometimes a bit too serious for some people I
think. People don’t know the “real me” here. And I.
Want. To. SCREAM!!!!
15-What
is 15? Did
anyone catch that? 15
is the number of times I’ve used the word “I” in these last few
paragraphs. Ok…whoa. Hold on a second….when did this trip become
about “I-I-I-I-I-I” again? Umm, try never Liz.
Alright,
shifting gears here for a moment. Here’s an excerpt from a recent
journal entry I did this past week:
“…I’ll
tell you all one thing. Something I didn’t expect was how selfish I’d
become. Yes I said it: I’m a full-time missionary this year and I’m
acting so selfish. Just typing that last
sentence brings tears to my eyes, because it’s the last place I want
to be in. I’ve tried everything to hold myself together and try not
to weep over how self-centered I’ve been since we’ve been here. You
see, I had this expectation that missions would get rid of all those
particular sins. I mean seriously, how could anyone think about
themselves in a place where death, disease and poverty are screaming
from every direction?
….Clearly
the opposite; if anything, being here has shown me how selfish I
still am in a lot of ways, and I can’t handle it anymore.
Today
I stayed behind while my team went to minister to a nearby village.
To be honest, staying behind was the most selfless thing I’ve done in
the last 2 weeks for the people here. I know that sounds crazy but
let me explain. All I did for those four hours was cry-sob
actually-at how disgusting I’d become. I hashed it out with God,
begging Him to change my heart and to break me for His people. How is
it that for as long as I can remember I’d be the chick sitting in
Starbucks just sobbing over God’s broken world, how I longed so badly
to be there amidst the sickness, the death and the destruction? And
now I’m here….and sometimes I want to give up! FATHER PLEASE BREAK
ME!”
01/25/12
Reading that
entry from a few days ago, It still breaks my heart.
Alright bear
with me now, because here’s the mind-blowing part of all this. A few
days later, my team was given an exercise to practice the gift of
the prophetic. We were each given a little piece of paper with one of
our teammates’ names on it, but weren’t allowed to look at it until
after the exercise was over. Each of us spent about 15-20 minutes
just praying for whoever the person was we held in our hands, asking
the Lord to show us what He wanted to say through us. My friend
Kathryn had absolutely no idea what I’d been going through that week
with my selfishness-in fact no one had-it was an internal thing
I’d been battling. After seeing my name on her paper (and most likely
thinking she had just written nothing like the rest of us) Kathryn
handed me the prophecy she received for her “person”. I still get
goosebumps reading this:
“Hi!
Whoever you are, I love you. When I closed my eyes to think about you
this is what I saw
‘i’
Such
a tiny letter, tiny word, yet it some how destroys us in a way.
What
do ‘I’ want, need, feel? And I like that in my little vision
it’s
a lower-case ‘i’. Because ‘i’ does exist. We do have wants and needs.
But
God is the upper case ‘I’. It’s about Him, not about us.
So
God cares about ‘i’ but let Him worry about that.
We
need to set our minds on Him, on the ‘I AM’. We become less,
He
becomes more. Forget about the ‘i wants’ and ‘i feels’
because
it’s not about us in the end. It’s not even about us right now.”
……………
Can you say
nailed
it? Can you say completely humbled
and broken? Can you say I’m going to shut
my mouth now God?
Jesus is never
done with us, even when we think we’ve reached “this point”. He’s
always writing our stories. I don’t always like what He’s doing in
me, it kills me actually. It hurts and it’s painful. But I wouldn’t
have it any other way. Because I know behind all the battles,
confusion and tears, God is doing something huge in all of us. The
chaos is just prayer answered-God continuing to wreck me, and break
me down. I’ll admit-sometimes I hate when He answers my prayers,
because I know what I’m getting myself into, I realize the cost I’m
counting, I know what I’m giving up, but I also know I have to keep
going.
So
I keep going. And I realize I’m not a selfish person, but
15 proves to
me that I still have so much selfishness to let go of than I even
thought. This is just the beginning, and I’ll always have more:
More to lay
down.
More to confess.
…More of
You. Less of me, Daddy….that is my prayer.
