This month has been so strange for me. I was placed on a temporary team for our Womaninstry month with some great ladies and we named ourselves Team Swag. For the first week here in Thailand both of our team leaders and one team mate were serving with their parents and mentors away from our team. So I was hanging out with my two remaining team mates and we ended up kinda being in our own worlds the first week until the others came back. We are serving with Light House In Action this month in different ways, bar ministry, slums kids, and moving the cafe from one building to a new store front. This hasn't been an easy month. Between team changes and the team being only for one month, doing bar ministry, and being boo'd by slum kids and yelled at to go home. We've still managed to have a ton of laughs and good times.
Emotionally I struggled with feeling misplaced and left out and like I had no one to talk to about life. Team changes aren't easy, you go from people who know you and can comfort you with a look to new people you don't know anything about, and you are expected to be open and vulnerable with them. Doing bar ministry and working with slums kids can be so draining emotionally. It's a hard place to be at day in and day out, having to love on people while feeling lost. It's month 9 for me and I've started the process of getting ready to go home to America and the crazy culture I left behind this year. It's more scary to think about going home than it is about going to Malaysia or Cambodia at this point. Because when I travel to those countries I'll be with people who have walked through this wacky year of life with me and know who I was and who I am now. When I get home people will only know the beginning and the end result, not the messy middle part. I've seen, heard, and felt things this year that most people will never even know about. It's so scary to me to have to open up about it all when I return to "real life".
So as I've been working through all of this Jesus met with me the other day. I started my day feeling lonely and while walking to the new cafe building I put my iPod on shuffle. The first song up was At Last by Etta James. The first verse goes "At last my love has come along, my LONELY days are OVER…" Wow, okay Jesus, thanks for that! The day went well for the most part. Work was good but exhausting, moving things up 10 flights of stairs all day. Then I went out with my former team leader Sarah and had a great conversation about our months and how we were doing. On my walk home from that Jesus put Philippians 4 on my mind. So I came home and read it. In it Paul starts by saying that he loves and misses them. Then he encourages them to be full of the Joy of the Lord and be considerate in all they do. Well to be honest I haven't been full of joy or all that considerate this month. I've been focused on my feelings of loneliness and exclusion. Next Paul talks about worry and how instead of worrying about everything to pray about everything and ask for what you need and give thanks for what you already have. So I pray for feelings of being included, and give thanks for having a team that does care for me and makes me laugh. I want God's peace that passes all understanding. So I fix my thoughts on things that are lovely, pure, admirable, honorable, right, and true. Things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Like the beautiful sunsets here that are all pink and orange light. The way my team can come up with one liners that are just so funny thinking about them makes me giggle. The way that God brought people like Sarah, Mikala and other team mates into my life to love on me and help me to grow.
I'm still working through all of this, but I know that the God of peace is with me.
