here’s some thoughts & things that have been happening in my life during this time in Myanmar! It’s kinda all over the place but hopefully it’ll make sense:)
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Thailand was very comfortable. We had AC, a nice bathroom, someone to cook us food, a real bed w/ clean sheets once a week, coffee shops & wifi literally right below our hostel, reliable transportation, all the things.
Myanmar has not been like that…we’re sleeping on the floor, no AC anywhere, cooking all our own meals with a single pot and a single pan, no grocery store, just a market with eggs & vegetable, no coffee! We use squatty potties & bucket showers, and have a LOT of downtime. the first few days here were an incredibly difficulty adjustment. but something the lord started working on in me right before leaving thailand is learning how to be content wherever i am and finding all my joy in him and not my circumstances (but that’s a whole other story). my point is, the first week and a half was hard. literally constant praying for enough strength just to make it through the day. like literally begging the lord constantly for energy. and then after about two weeks i started to get exhausted with how much i was praying to the point where i literally wrote in my journal “i don’t know what to do anymore, i don’t even want to pray anymore bc i am constantly asking the lord for strength and he always provides but it’s so exhausting. i’m tired of fighting”. and that’s when the enemy ATTACKED.
If you ask my team, they’ll (hopefully) tell you that i’ve grown a lot this year. i’ve let go of a lot of my past self. i’ve healed a lot. i’ve forgiven a lot. i’ve learned a lot about myself and the lord. And for the past month ive been so excited to go home and put it all into practice. but all of a sudden the enemy started telling me “haha sike you actually haven’t grown at all” and then i just started to fall apart. because now not only was i begging the lord for strength and energy but i was begging him to get this enemy out of my head! this went on for about a week, until yesterday. yesterday we went into the city, idk if that has anything to do with this story but it just wasn’t a good day for me. nothing bad happened i just kept finding myself getting so easily angered and being so impatient and unkind to people and then i would get frustrated that i was doing that but then end up just making it even worse. anyways, on the bus ride home (it was about 2 and a half hours) i just sat and thought about how mad i was at myself for the way i had been acting and for allowing the enemy to dig at me so much. I came up with this picture in my head to describe the way I was feeling:
“the whole race i have been climbing a mountain. along the way i have let go of baggage weighing me down and i’ve been healing hurt parts of myself. finally, i am so close to the top, so anxious to get there. and then i fell all the way down and broke every single bone in my body.” it’s like, i was so close to the top (the end of the race maybe?) and i fell all the way down and lost all the growth & progress i have made. and now i’m returning home even more broken and worse than i was before i started.
so i got off the bus with these thoughts in my head. i felt so frustrated and discouraged i knew i just needed to go pray about it. so i grabbed my bible and journal and sat at our table on our ministry’s site. i wrote out that image in my journal and asked the lord to just help me understand what to do. as i was praying one of the little boys came over and sat down next to me and started playing with my other pen. i gave him a piece of paper so he could draw while i finished praying so he wouldn’t distract me. and as i started to get back to my prayer, the lord told me this:
“the mountain that i am at the bottom of is the not the same one i’ve been climbing, it’s a new one – the one i’m going to have to climb when i get home. and yes, all the bones in my body are broken but that’s okay because that just means i have no choice but to rely on the lord to carry me to the top of this mountain. and as we go along the journey i will heal, but he promises that he will never leave me, he will just be so proud of me!”
right after i finished writing this in my journal, the little boy who cannot read or speak english (so has no idea what i’m writing) hands me the piece of paper with a picture of me standing on top of a mountain… i mean, i don’t think it’s possible for the lord to be anymore clear than that!
and it just all comes together because the reason it is so exhausting for me to be praying constantly right now is because He is teaching me how to fight became when i get home that is what i am going to have to do. i am going to have to literally constantly pray for the Lord to help me fight against my flesh’s desires & fight against the enemy and continue follow Jesus and stay on this journey with him in order to make it to the top, to heaven!
but yeah, i just wanted to share this with you because the Lord really spoke to me and idk maybe it will encourage you or something? there’s a song that i’ve been listening to a lot in this country called “it is well” by Bethel music and there’s a line it in that says “this mountain that’s in front of me will be thrown into the midst of the sea” so if you’re facing a mountain right now and you feel broken and don’t know what to do, just allow the Lord to carry you because he wants to help you! and soon enough that mountain will be thrown into the sea.
Jesus literally moves mountains!!! he’s so cool like that!!
ok that’s it haha thanks for reading hope it all makes sense!
i’ll be back in America in 14 days so that’s wild!
if you want to talk about more things that i’ve been learning ya know feel free to reach out! :)<3
