Nowhere to Go But Up

Time for honesty hour.

I have been blogging for and about the World Race for over a year now. Somehow, I found writing before actually launching on the Race infinitely easier. It’s not like I don’t have plenty to write about. I am a missionary after all. My stories about fundraising and the Lord paving the way to get me here were important, yes, but these stories from the mission field are the ones worth telling. These are the stories you, my supporters want to hear. These are the stories the Lord can and will use to impact lives back home.

So why don’t I want to write them?

This has happened every month so far. We hit about the halfway point, only two weeks left of ministry before we’re onto our next country, and I dread the passing of time knowing I am due another weekly post. I find the thought of sitting down to write and therefore processing whatever I’ve learned this particular week, whatever I’m walking in, whatever the Lord is teaching me, a complete chore. I don’t want to do it. So I do what I do best, and procrastinate. I actually wrote this entire post the other day, forgot to save it, then attempted to post it on poor WiFi, and as you can guess, I lost the entire thing. Gone forever. I’ll admit the part of me that’s always looking for the easy way out took that to mean this week’s post just isn’t meant to be, maybe I’ll just skip it. I told myself trying to rewrite it would be a sorry attempt so there’s no point.

I walked into the Race confident that the Lord would grow and change me this year, but only in simple refinements. I already did all my growing, you see. In the summer of 2017 I served as an intern with American-Caribbean Experience for about three months, and walked out of it a complete-180 from the Mal who walked into it. So, when the Lord called me to the Race not long after, I said yes because He had already made me my best self, how could there be more to grow? (Yes, I realize how ridiculous this sounds now typing it out. Have patience with my pride, please.) 

Last month I wrote a post about the brokenness I have found myself walking in. (If you missed it, read here.) Because of my prideful beliefs about how this Race was going to go, I’ve felt blindsided. I’ve been frustrated and not myself for weeks now. I have been constantly on edge, not present with my team or with the Lord, and to be honest, going through the motions to get through each day. I’ve chalked it up to the surface-level things, trying to convince those around me and more than anyone, myself. I’ve called it exhaustion; “I just haven’t had a good night’s rest in four months.” I’ve blamed it on the community aspect of the Race; “I’m not getting enough introvert time.” I’ve said it’s homesickness; “I just really miss my family.” While these things may be contributing factors, what I haven’t wanted to admit is that I have found once rock-solid foundational aspects of my faith and who I believe God is to be shakey and unstable at best. I’ve felt a confusion and hardness in my heart that I haven’t seen in years, since a much less mature age and stage of my faith. 

I haven’t been honest with myself because this heaviness I feel terrifies me. I frequently find myself living in constant fear of the person I used to be, of backsliding to old destructive habits and patterns of thinking. I’m also an enneagram type 4, meaning I am an extremely emotional person and I feel everything in the world very intensely. It also means I often equate my feelings for truth. I feel broken, so the world is broken. I feel hopeless, so the world must be hopeless. 

Then I find myself questioning God. Why am I here? Why did you call me to the World Race, provide all of the funding, everything I’ve needed to get here, just so I could question Your goodness everywhere I look? 

I’ve heard countless stories of the most faithful missionaries, on fire for the Lord who set out to bring kingdom to whatever country or community, only to end up completely burnt out, and walking away from the Lord and their faith entirely. How that could happen never made any sense to me, until now. 

Yes, I’m broken. Yes, I feel hopeless. Yes, I’m struggling to see how He can truly be good when so much death, destruction, poverty, injustice, and suffering exists in the world. But I’m not asking these questions or walking in this brokenness right now because I’ve seen or encountered too much. It’s only month four, I still have seven to go. It’s instead because I’m feeling too much, so much more than I was ever meant to alone. 

Each enneagram type has another type they begin to act like under stress. For 4’s, stress looks like taking on the characteristics of a type 2, “The Helper.” I’ve recently realized this has been my behavior for the last few weeks. I’m putting so much pressure on myself to be this “faithful missionary”, the “World Racer living her best life,” and being incredibly hard on myself thinking I’m selfish for always focusing so much on my own feelings. So I’ve been hiding them, trying to pour out more for others from a tank that has long been empty. 

Throughout all of this in the last few weeks, my question to the Lord has consistently been “where do we go from here?” He answered me, true to our relationship, through Mary Poppins Returns. 

I have literally been waiting years for this movie to come out, so I of course made my team go see it with me on one of our last nights in El Salvador.

(**spoiler alert**)

Towards the end of the movie, Angela Lansbury makes a surprise appearance as the Balloon Lady, and summing up the story perfectly in all of her Mrs. Potts wisdom, she informs Michael: “you’ve forgotten what it’s like…to be a child!” The movie ends with the whole cast floating into the air by way of balloons and singing a song that touched me deeply for nostalgia’s sake, but even more so for what the Lord has been trying to tell me:

“Now my heart is so light
That I think I just might
Start feeding the birds
And then go fly a kite!
With your head in a cloud
Only laughter’s allowed
And there’s nowhere to go but up…

Our ministry this month is working in a daycare with children ages one-six years old. I spend my days chasing snotty noses on a playground, instigating tickle fights, laughing, and singing silly songs. Through this, the Lord has shown me that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a child. Amidst all of my brokenness, I’ve relearned the importance of carrying childlike faith, and the simple power of choosing joy daily. 

Once again, I still don’t have answers. But here, from the unexpected bottom where I never thought I’d find myself, I have found hope in knowing there’s nowhere to go but up.