It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Coming from Ohio and Texas, areas so flat you can watch your dog run away for two days, the Himalayan mountain range was no joke. Climbing paths not travers able by anything other than a sure-footed Sherpa while enduring monsoon rains and curry-induced diarrhea for 12+ miles every day almost did me in. I would have thrown in the towel….but it smelled of mildew from 4 days of constant rain.
Despite it being the most difficult thing I’ve ever endured, I did endure it, and am better for it. But there was something that broke me, and it wasn’t the physical element.
Every day we hiked past crumbled houses. Houses that hadn’t been fixed since the earthquake a year and a half ago. Our ministry host still doesn’t have his own home since his was destroyed and spent last winter shivering under a tin roof. He also talked to two people who had never even heard the name “Jesus”. Hindu and Buddhist extremists make it extremely difficult for Christian missionaries and we have to be very careful what we say or do. Those who have heard of Jesus or Christianity think of it as a money-hungry western religion and want nothing to do with it.
From the gang wars in Colombia to the refugees in Greece, the terrorist attack in the Istanbul airport to the suffering Nepali people, from the ignorance and apathy of those most able to help, to my own family’s issues, for me, this race has consisted of seeing how truly broken this world is.
Seeing needs and meeting them is something that I’m wired to do. A few things I learned about myself last month is that I’m wired to be a visionary and thrive on making harmony and peace out of tough or difficult situations. That’s fine and easy when my life consisted of a 9-5 with my only conflict being the guy who cuts me off in traffic. What this race has shown me is instance after instance, situation after situation, problems after problems which either have no solution or the solution is so far outside of my scope of influence that I might as well send a man to the moon.
It’s all fine and dandy to say that everything is in God’s plan or that all this is the result of sin in the world or to simply focus on changing one person’s world, but I don’t have that option.
All my “answers” don’t help my friends who are still in refugee camps with no prospect of resuming their lives. Nothing I can do will help those who are hooked on drugs in Colombia. I can’t rebuild the house of every person I met this last week, I can’t fix the relationships being ripped apart in my family.
“Put it in God’s hands” is what I keep being told and what I keep telling myself. Personally and biblically, I think that’s a cop out.
There is so much pain, so much need, so much hurt in this world and never have I been more keenly aware of it nor more helpless to change it.
