Let me paint a picture for you. You are in your tent sleeping outside after a monsoon rainstorm, and you realize that it’s your morning to make breakfast with your team for the rest of the 25 people living on a compound in Nsoko, Swaziland. You step outside of your tent gingerly so as not to get any water from the outside, into the tent to try and preserve your sleeping bag and pad from getting wet. As you slip on your “sexy crocs” to head into the kitchen to start boiling water for coffee and oats for the rest of the team, you see several people sitting cross legged on the cement floor, reading the word, journaling, or simply with their eyes closed spending precious and much needed quiet time. You feel in your heart that this is right where you are meant to be as you are stirring the oats, and the rest of your team piles into the kitchen one by one to help make a mass amount of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the rest of the day for everyone. This is community living.
This was just a small example of the reality that I lived in last month, and was a warm up to how this month to come will be as well, since we are going to be moving into “all squad month” for Madagascar. We spent our time living in close vicinity with 30 people in one compound, eating together, worshipping together, figuring out how to make small amounts of space work for everyone, and a lot of my time, I spent fighting an internal battle.
This month, it was pounded in to my head that I struggle with the fear of man. This month I felt more alone than I really ever felt at home. Not because I didn’t have ample amounts of people around me to hang out with, or to affirm me in who I am, or to speak positive to me. But yet and still, I felt very isolated at times. When we first got to our compound, it was spoken to me in my team that they really wanted me to not lean on them so much to work through things, because they aren’t able to fix the things that I struggle with. It was feedback that they gave to me, saying that they had noticed me seeking them out for support and answers that really only God can give, and redirected me to him. This really set the tone for my whole month, because I really took a long and hard look at myself. It was made clear to me in that moment just how much I do this. Especially before I left on the race, I realize that I was leaning on the people back home. I was always looking to be affirmed by how people view me, or always waiting to have other people give me answers on how to tackle some of the biggest strong holds in my life, instead of running those things to God.
Much of the rest of the month, this same issue came up in many different ways. There was a constant hurt that I felt much of the time, because I kept feeling inadequate. All I wanted was to feel that I had a place in the teams, and that I wasn’t just the awkward duck that no one really connected with. Much of the month I struggled with feeling like second choice, or feeling un-included in my team, and with others. This was all just a lie that I was telling myself, and that stems from my own struggle with self worth. This has been a perpetual problem throughout my life, and God was using my living circumstances to bring it up and out. Let me tell you, it hurt! I felt that it would be easier to just retreat in this feeling at times, and to just wallow in my lies that I was telling myself. I wanted to just hide so much of the month, because my heart was being attacked. My identity in Christ was being attacked. I felt that I was losing faith that he is who he says he is, and that I am who he says I am. But because of this struggle, he has pin pointed out that I put people’s opinions over his. Because of this month, and not being able to just run away or escape to the comforts that I have at home, he has really started “hammering things out of me” -(Bill), and I can see that.
This month, I really learned, and am still in the fire being refined by this, that HE is my fortress. I am not what other people think of me, and I am not even how I FEEL that I am. I am uniquely made, and so is everyone else. The hand can’t be the foot, and a eye can’t be the legs. I know that’s a weird analogy, but it’s the straight up truth! I am so thankful to be uncomfortable in this, and I am so thankful that he is really working to break these things off of me. I am truly beautifully and wonderfully made, and also extremely nutty, and awkward at times. He’s made me to be creative and contemplative in my thinking, and he has given me his heart for people. Sometimes we need to be stripped of the identity that we are given by other people, in order for the shell to fall off, and the true soul to be exposed. THAT is the beauty of living in this community, and it will continue to be refined and established in this coming up month, and I can’t wait for it!
Now, aside from all of that, that’s not to say that it was this terrible horrible thing that I had to suffer through. The race just seems to really highlight things in your life that you struggle with, or that can be improved on. But there was sooooooo many more good moments that really made me feel like this is right where I need to be. I loved just sitting in silence with people at times, or the times where I had people fighting with me praying for me, or doing an inner healing session with me (another blog to come), or our dates with people one on one, or our dance party’s and mafia games. It was like a denser highlighted version of life itself, and such a great example of how life is meant to be lived. We are meant to be in community, working through things together and with God, and just simply walking alongside our peeps in the day to day life. It’s been gouda!
Finally…guys I am really really still in need of funds to keep me here on the race. Please consider donating to keep me on the race! I love you all and miss you guys back home!!
-Mariah
