As a Christmas gift, my dad asked for me to write about a topic of my choice. At first I felt overwhelmed – after all, I just spent all year blogging (kind of) and talking about my feelings…I’m tired and I just want to relax at home. I’d rather just go out and buy a present I can wrap up and not put (much) thought into.
But in the interest of not being the Scrooge who just got back from the World Race, I opened my filthy, temperamental, ancient MacBook and stared at the blinking cursor.
Then this (below) came pouring out. I didn’t really edit it – not because I didn’t care, but because my fingers did not stop moving from the moment I started typing. As the words took their places on the paper the faces, landscapes, hardships, and joys were flashing through my mind. It was overwhelming at times to relive some of the pain and sights of this year, but at the end it is a fantastic reminder of JOY. The beautiful joy that we celebrate at Christmas and the joy we can have year round, around the world.
So, this was what I gave my dad for Christmas. But really, it was a gift to me. There is no way I would have allowed myself the space to just sit and write had it not been for his request. Thank you for everything, Dad!
Well, I made it around the world and have arrived home! It is hard to believe that everything I did and saw this past year actually happened. After being home for just a week, it already feels like a distant dream.
But I know that it did happen.
The broken hearts of the widows in Mozambique are still aching.
The stomachs of the hungry orphans in Swaziland are still grumbling.
The young women in Thailand are still desperate to find a job outside of a bar.
The injustice in the world that I read about in history class in school became real this year. There is an extraordinary amount of need in this world.
And now that I am home; well-fed, warm, comfortable, and safe it would be easy to forget about all that God showed me this year as I spent time with his beautiful children around the world.
It would be easy to forget what it was like to hold a child’s hand as she eats her only meal of the day after walking 2 miles across multiple villages.
It would be easy to forget the children who live in a garbage dump in Trujillo, Peru digging food out of a heaping pile of my leftovers.
It would be easy to forget the poverty stricken men and women living in homes made of tin and tarp in the suburbs of Cape Town who are desperate for work.
So I am going to choose to remember.
And in remembering, you know what else I remember?
The joyful squeals of children as they jumped and played on the bamboo hut outside our house in Cambodia.
The beautiful melodies of worship pouring out of the walls of every church we visited around the world.
The smiles of every single Thai person we met who welcomed us into their country and their homes – offering us only the very best!
There is an inexplicable joy that so many people I met carried with them.
The kind of joy that just doesn’t make sense based on their burdening circumstances and hardships.
At first I just didn’t get it. How could someone be joyful amidst so much pain and suffering?
It is what the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. Although there is much suffering to endure, we can persevere because we know that the things of this earth are temporary, and we have a heavenly home being prepared for us.
Once I began to grasp just a tiny bit of what it would be like to live a life that is completely focused on God I started to understand this inexplicable joy. I do not want my joy to be based on my circumstances, surroundings, and comforts, but instead deeply rooted in God and the beauty of what Jesus did on the cross out of his deep love for me.
One of the pieces I am taking away from this trip is just that. I want my joy to be constant. Not wavering based on what is happening around me.
Which is why I can sit here, at my home with all the comforts I could imagine and have my joy be exactly the same as it was when I was sweltering hot and sick sleeping in a tent in Cambodia. (ehh, okay maybe I’m still working on that one…)
Just like so many of the steady, joyful people I met around the world, I will not allow my circumstances dictate my joy. There will be definitely be hard times. I will be sad, angry, lonely, and more.
But I long to rejoice in those hard times because I know that there is something far greater to be joyful about.
I am forever grateful for the amazing opportunity to go on the World Race.
To serve and be served, to love and be loved, to grow and help others grow closer to the Lord.
Thank you so much for your love and support from home. I assure you, it was felt all across the world!
