So, I wanted to share with you all a bit about what I have been learning as of late. I came out here originally with the mindset of wanting to create change in the world, but also to essentially satiate a desire in my heart to feel worth while by living out of a savior complex. UGH. I literally don’t like to admit this to myself, but really, that’s where I was, coming from initially. My heart wasn’t wrong, my mindset was just slightly ignorant. I didn’t understand that doing something for someone else or a group of others isn’t going to heal wounds and deep lies in my heart about myself, that create the fallocy in my mind about what I need to do to EARN a self righteous idea of worth. Only God can do that, and he has been. I did have the genuine desire to help, and to love others. Good! But, I am simply realizing that it wasn’t initially in the purest of forms, because I was coming from a place of feeling unworthy, and therefore, essentially trying to prove something to myself, rather than to focus on the fact that I myself am not the know it all who will fix things in the world. God is already in these places and doing work. I am simply a tool, to help catalyze what is already in action in these countries. Coming out here wasn’t wrong though, because God finds ways to shift our minds and situations to look more in alignment with him no matter what. I am realizing more and more that I AM NOT THE SAVIOR. He is. It isn’t about me and what I have to give, or my ability to come and serve others. I am only just recently starting to really figure this out. It’s not, however, without several slaps in the face as reminders every so often on the race. Like this last week here in India.
My team and I have been helping to move a lot of furniture, such as bunk beds, and tables, clothes, and even the children in the foster home organization for kids with special needs that we have been working with. When I say move the children, I mean, for some of them, lifting them by their arms and legs out of the car stuffed with kids and carrying them in this same manner up 2-3 flights of stairs. At home, I am a nursing assistant, and move people all of the time, but with lifting equipment, and in ways that is more physically supportive and comfortable to the people. So, this is something that I am used to. However, being here, and not having the equipment to do it in a ethical way by my standards and the western world’s standards, made me cringe to say the least.
I found myself initially enraged and wanting to pitch in my ways of doing things, thinking that I would be helping them to do it in a better way for the kids. Granted, it may be better on them physically, as well as on our bodies to move them with a sheet underneath them, in a way that I would transfer people at the hospital I work for at home. But then again, what place do I really have to come in and dictate the way that they do things?
Especially with it being a country where special needs “cast aways” are usually just left out on the streets to become out of sight, out of mind. I had to take a step back from my own self righteousness and wanting to fix an issue that I saw with the way things were being run and gain some perspective on the fact that it isn’t my place. They are doing the best that they can with the resources and the man power that they do have. The organization works really hard to ensure that the kids are found better places to live in the future, through working with, and counseling their biological parents to hopefully be able to take them back if it’s in the best interest of the child. Their ultimate goal is to bring them back to their parents after working with them and showing them that they CAN care for them. Also, if that isn’t an option, they do work really hard to make sure that they are adopted into the best possible homes for the children. This isn’t an institution that just plans to keep them forever. It is a wonderful organization that has taken the initiative to help stop these kids from being simply tossed aside and thrown away to be forgotten.
Bless them for even having the hearts to care for these kids.It has been a perspective shift, and a reminder that no matter how much I want to come in and change a situation, that’s not what it’s about. It’s about being available, and ready to help WHEREVER I am needed. God has really been changing my view on why I am here. I started off the race wanting to come in and “save the world”, so to speak. But over time, he has been speaking to me about less of me, and more of him.
IT ISN’T ABOUT ME. It isn’t about my squad. It’s about him, and what he is already doing in these 12 countries that we are coming into.
This isn’t to discredit the work that we have all done, because we did choose to say yes to something many would say no to. But, I am just speaking to all of you that I am beginning to realize more and more how small I really am. I am beginning to realize that I am not going to be able to fix everything. Make a difference, yes. Perfect the way that a foster home for special needs children is run? No. Be able to help feed and clothe every single person that I see on the side of the road who are suffering? No. We can all make small changes in the way that we live our lives, and we can all come together as a body of people who decide that they have something to give and choose to give it. But when coming into other people’s countries and saying that we are here to represent Christ, and be a tool alongside the desire to create positive change, that means that sometimes more humility is required than asserting your own ways of doing things.
PERSPECTIVE.
He has been teaching me, through situations like this, that I have the ability to help, I have the ability to intercede and pray for situations that hurt my heart because of the unfairness of living that many people we have met, suffer in. I am learning that prayer changes things, and I am a tool to walk alongside organizations and people in their home countries working towards bettering situations by being hands where I am needed, not to come in and try to impose what I think.
I am not superman, mother Teresa, or Jesus. I am Mariah, a girl from Portland, Oregon who simply has the honor of stepping in to countries for a month to do absolutely whatever I can, with my squad to inflict change. It’s not about me and what I can do though, it’s just not. It’s about being available, and realizing that no matter what, at the end of the day, my worth doesn’t fluctuate based on what I do or don’t do. Because who God is remains the same, and we aren’t here to earn anything. I am here to answer a call I heard in my heart to be available to the work being done around the world in whatever ways that looks like.
