Asia has come and gone and now I’m here in Central America…. Here I am four months behind from where my last blog took place. Almost four different countries have come and gone and my time has been a mix of so many different experiences, people, and things I have seen and learned. In coming up to par what I’ve worked through that I shared in my latest post, I wanted to share a little about what I started to see in Cambodia. And from Cambodia what I hope for in these next four months.
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Cambodia was actually the specific country that was prophesied over me in my beginning process of fundraising for the World Race. Although the word from the Lord wasn’t specifically about me going to Cambodia, it did represent the calling the Lord had for me going abroad for 11 months and just how He’s equipped me. It was about my relationship with the Lord and saying yes to Him.
After four months, I was in Cambodia. It was a month that my love grew for the little and wild ones that I helped with in the classroom. It was a draining month from the heat, but also it was a month that I could finally see the growth I had been praying for since month 1. Four months of struggling (which I know has and will continue on), to finally start to see a little sprout of growth. I finally felt like I could walk in more freedom that I felt constrained in the past months. It just took me time to lay down the focus on the growth itself and take time to struggle with the Lord and walk through the hard things.
At debrief before we headed to Cambodia, I knew I was saying yes to pursuing Him through the difficulty, but I honestly had no idea what that would look like or quite frankly how to walk through what was coming.
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I’ve thought for so long that it is easier to suppress the hard things than to deal with them. I thought it was easier to suck up the difficultly and get to the next season, rather than taking the opportunity to walk through the hard things and walk through them in a way that not only brings growth but calls others higher. The hard things are uncomfortable, and don’t always feel peaceful. The hard things hurt and feel like open wounds, and it always seemed easier for me to cover up a wound than have to tend to the pain it’ll cause to clean it out.
Romans 5 specifically talks about the suffering and enduring through the hard things. Instead of stepping away from the hard things because “we don’t want to deal with it”, we are to face them head first with the Lord. He doesn’t promise it’ll be easy or pretty, but He does promise that through Christ we can endure, we can allow Him to shape and mold our character to be more like him and He will fill us with hope that won’t be circumstantial, but eternal.
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Now taking a step back and processing through so much, I can see all of this. I told myself that even though things would get hard moving into Cambodia, I knew I didn’t want to shrink back in fear and revert to my old ways. Instead I knew I wanted to step through the very things that would be hard and hold fast to my Heavenly Father.
I can see what He has produced in the last couple months when things got hard. I can’t say I walked through them perfectly, because I’m flawed. I also can’t say it was the most difficult experiences I’ve faced in my life, because they weren’t. I do know that I’ve been learning what it looks like to walk through the hard things, to choose to not suppress what I’m feeling, nor to numb myself to the circumstances I’m faced with. Learning to walk through the hard things requires me to fix my eyes on the Lord and hold onto the peace, hope, love, and grace He provides through it.
Month 5 was Cambodia….now here I am headed into month 9 to Honduras. With seeing just a small glimpse of what has occurred around me and in me in these last 4 months, I see there’s so much more of what I want to learn and learn to walk out.
Three months is going to fly by…. Now is the time to be the most intentional with the Lord and allowing that to pour into my intentionality with others. Now is the time to continue to find my voice and press into the uncomfortable things even when it makes my stomach drop. Now is the time to really press into what the Lord wants to do in me and use me as a vessel to pour out into the world.
More than anything I pray that the Lord will have my continual focus. That I will continue to look at Him and see Him where I am at right now. Whatever it is I may be doing, even in the smallest things that might seem pointless, that I will see Him in it all. That I will continue to press into the hard things that will come along the way, and choose to step out into what the Lord calls me to do. So when the pressures of being back home weigh on me, I will truly know that my devotion to Him is first and foremost before anything or anyone else. That I will not forget what He has done in my heart and in my life; and that the people, experiences, and places I’ve been have been a crucial part in my story that have brought me to where I am and what the Lord has shown me.
In Christ,
M.
