Our first off day on the race. Long overdue, The Tovs were beyond ecstatic to head into downtown Belgrade. Hair done, dresses and make-up dragged out of our packs, we were ready to treat ourselves. We grabbed breakfast and met up with one of the other teams. The afternoon heat started to surge and brought along with it a headache. And soon after nausea. My first migraine on the race. Not a rarity, but certainly something I hadn’t expected to plague me so soon. Four days later I had another one. This one much worse. Leaving me curled up on the bathroom floor of the bible school during our camp talent show with my teammate, Hannah, waiting patiently and prayerfully in the hall until I was ready for her to enter. There’s nothing more humbling than laying half-naked, curled up on your side, covering your ears in the dark on a cold tile floor all while knowing the bathroom reeks of vomit while your teammate rubs your back and silently prays.
A week and a half later we began our travel to Romania. Our hosts were generous enough to bring vans to drive us. The scenery was beautiful. I was captivated, enamored even, by the mountains. Nausea creeped in. I tried to ignore it. But it only grew in intensity. Soon after I was on the side of the road dry-heaving in front of two vans full of humans. Yet again, there was Hannah Bethany Reynolds, tying up my hair, rubbing my back and holding my glasses as I stuck my face out the window to catch some relief in the cold breeze for the remainder of our 6 hours on the road. This was only the beginning, as I spent the rest of the month nauseous ANY time I set foot in a moving vehicle for any period of time.
Travel Day Month 2 edition: The first of our views of Romania.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve experienced car-sickness before, but never to this severity. It just didn’t make sense. And with Month 2 coming to a close and knowing that yet another travel day to Bulgaria was approaching, I was fervently in prayer. Fourteen of our squad mates and our translator crammed into our bus and two hours later my dear old friend nausea struck again. This time my sweet friend, Grace, was there to braid my hair and rub peppermint on my temples and read to me for the rest of the bus ride as I tried as best I could to discreetly throw up into my tiny plastic bag.
Sometimes one of your favorite humans, in my case Grace Lynn Underwood, comes to visit you and you sit on giant rocks by the Black Sea and have long life chats and laugh about who knows what.
Month 3. Bulgaria. By far the roughest month on the race. A month filled with spiritual warfare for my team, and I daresay my entire squad. It started with sleeplessness. I’m a great sleeper. I pride myself on being able to fall asleep anywhere at any time and be able to sleep through pretty much anything. I couldn’t even recall the last time I had awoken and remembered a dream. But in Varna, Bulgaria that wasn’t the case. On night one I woke up a 2:11 am in complete terror. Not of anything or anyone in particular, but unable to fall back asleep nonetheless. This trend continued, and only worsened. I started to remember by bad dreams and was lucky to get a couple hours a sleep a night. Most of those nights were spent pouring over the Bible. Reading through Genesis, Exodus, Job and the Psalms.
After 5 nights of little to no sleep and plenty of stress, I was less than surprised when another migraine hit. Laying on the floor of the church we were sleeping in, I could feel the hands and hear the whispers and tears of my teammates in prayer around me. After this one, we prayed for permanent healing. And we were taking all precautions. We cut migraine triggers out of my diet; bread, cheese and chocolate. My team did everything they could to ensure I would get a good night of rest. But I was still restless. Sleepless. Frustrated. Exhausted in every sense of the word.
Team time walks to the lighthouse in Varna featuring our squad leader Justin and a professional photographer we stumbled upon.
One day I took my pal Hannah to the dentist. I held her head and wiped her tears as she sat in excruciating pain, trying to communicate and advocate despite the language barrier. We walked back and desperately needed a nap. I felt a slight headache, but figured a nap and some coffee would help. Nope. Migraine number 4 culminated into me laying on the bathroom floor overwhelmed to the point of tears, able to hear the cries of my teammates right outside the door. Overwhelmed not only by the physical pain I was in, but aware of my worst fears. Being helpless. Feeling like a burden. Needing to be taken care of. Being weak. Feeling broken. I remember finally mustering out the words, “I’m so sorry,” to my teammates. To these humans who put everything on hold to be at my side. Who wept when I wept. Who loved and cared for me so well.
That night we had ministry at the church we were staying and I laid sandwiched in-between two of my teammates in the next room, frustrated that there I was in Varna, Bulgaria having raised thousands of dollars and yet unable to do a thing. Ministry ended, everyone left the church and not too long after a Bulgarian woman rushed in and said the Holy Spirit told her to come pray for me. My team gathered around me as this woman clutched one of my hands to my chest and placed the other on my head. I have no idea what she prayed but it was fervent. It was pleading. It was powerful. Until finally she broke out singing “Alleluia.” And slowly my teammates and our hosts started to join. It was beautiful. She left and my host explained that she prayed a prayer of thanksgiving and healing. That I was already healed.
Two days later migraine number five hit. That means that in the first 10 weeks on the race I had more migraines than I did the last year and a half of my life. This one was different. I didn’t throw up. It didn’t leave me completely immobilized. The night of October 25th I couldn’t sleep. At that point I had moved out to the main “sanctuary” as not to disturb anyone when I got up in the middle of the night. And this night was no different. I had gone to bed at midnight and awoke what seemed like hours later, only to find out it was 1:30 am. I laid there for an hour until I finally decided to get up. Having the most tender of hearts and unwilling to let herself sleep knowing I was awake, my teammate Zoe followed me into the kitchen. We sat and talked and prayed and laughed until sometime around 4:30 am she finally said, “Let’s play Dutch Blitz. And if I win you have to go back to bed and if you win we just stay up for the day. Deal?” Easy. DEAL. Dutch Blitz is my favorite and Zoe loathes cards and had never even played before. I’d take that deal any day. But she won. She beat me. (Thanks, Jesus.)
A deal is a deal so we walked back to our sleeping bags laying on the sanctuary floor. I snuggled in and we prayed for sleep. For peaceful dreams. And I was near tears. The prayers in my head sounding something like this, “Jesus, please let me sleep. Please. I don’t want to have migraines anymore. I’m tired of being tired. I don’t want to burden them any longer. I just want laughter and fun and joy…” And then I felt a hand on my forehead. A firm, but gentle hand. It was comforting. It brought me peace. I just assumed it was Zoe, who was sleeping not 5 feet away and instantly fell asleep.
A few hours later I woke up not remembering how I had fallen asleep until later that morning. I was mid conversation with Zoe when I remembered and abruptly shouted, “I remember feeling a hand on my forehead and then instantly falling asleep!” “What?! Paige, that wasn’t me, but I was praying that Jesus would come and lay His hands on you!” Stop. JESUS’ HANDS? On MY forehead?? Jesus’. Hands. On my forehead.
Highlight of the month and actually my race, was having the honor of baptizing one of my dearest friends, Zoe Harrison Torres.
For the remaining week and a half in Bulgaria I didn’t have any trouble sleeping. I didn’t have any bad dreams. I didn’t have any more migraines. Two days before heading to our next country I was telling Grace about the night Jesus touched my forehead. “Wait, was this recently? As in last week?” I couldn’t remember the exact day so I ran to my journal and told her I had written about it on October 26th. “PAIGE. The night of the 25th I woke in the middle of the night and the Lord gave me the phrase ‘SHE’S HEALED.’”
Powerful, right? As soon as she said it, I believed it. I knew I had been healed. So two days later when we took a six hour train ride to our squad meeting point, I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t get motion sick. And the next day, as we were about to spend 11 hours on a bus driving through the mountains I prayed, “Jesus, thank you for healing me so that I can delight in all your creation and not spend this day with my head in a trash bag.” And that’s exactly what happened. I spent the day smiling at the view of the Balkan Mountains out that bus window around every corner. Not even a HINT of nausea.
As I spent time reflecting on my time in Bulgaria the Lord gave me the word HEALED. What I love about this word is that God operates outside of time, so while we may still be healing, we’ve already been healed. We’ve been healed from the past, we are healing and we will be healed. That’s a promise.
And when I asked the Lord what He wanted me to focus on this month, he gave me the words EXALT and MEEKNESS. Exalt, a word actually given to me days before by Hannah, along with the verse 1 Peter 5:6; “therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.” Great words in any context, but I wasn’t sure how they applied to me until I sat down to write this blog and reflected on some truth Zoe had given me earlier that day. “The Lord can’t lift you if you’re not low enough to be lifted.”
I wasn’t low enough. And it wasn’t until I was low enough, lying half-naked on the bathroom floor in Varna, Bulgaria to be exact, that the Lord showed me true dependence. He showed me true humility and love and gentleness and patience and grace through the hands and the hearts of my six teammates. He’s teaching me about meekness. How to see the beauty in my weakness. Because no matter the state or condition of my body, whether in weakness or in strength, the truth that I am a vessel, a tabernacle and a sanctuary intended solely for the purpose of the Lord’s glory remains unchanged.
“Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
1 Corinthians 6:18-19.
This month my team is in Pristina, Kosovo. Please keep my team, squad, this city and this nation in your prayers. This is my squad’s final month in Europe and we will be headed to Africa shortly after Thanksgiving.
Thanks for making it through the world’s longest blog post. I’m still in need of just over $300 to be fully funded. Thank you thank you thank you to all my supporters for getting me here. What a blessing you are. See ya next time.
