There have been days, many in fact over the course of the last 8 months, when I don’t want to be here. Days when I want nothing more than to go home, to sit in air conditioning, to see my family, to get in my car and to drive wherever I want to go. There were days in Cambodia that I didn’t want to get out of bed to go teach my adorable rambunctious kindergarteners. There are days in Thailand where I don’t want to give up time by myself to prayer walk or to intercede on behalf of my team. There are days that persevering for 3 more months seems near impossible.
These are the days that I look back on the race and on the blogs that I have written and I feel like a fraud. My blog seems to portray that each month I have learned a neatly packaged lesson on joy, on sacrifice or on love. But the truth is, these are lessons that I’m still learning. The lessons that He has taught me over the last 8 months are lessons that I will continue to learn the rest of my life. I am still learning to fight for joy, to pour out all of my love onto the people surrounding me and to sacrifice my own desires and wants for others. There are days that I miss the mark, days that I don’t want to fight or to give, and it’s easy to beat myself up over it. It’s easy to feel condemned and to feel that I’m never going to “get it right.”
But the beauty is that I don’t have to get it right. He already has. I am not the one who is extraordinary. He is. It’s not what I’m doing that’s extraordinary. It’s what He has done. And it is what He has done that compels me to be faithful in the ordinary moments of my day. To be faithful to get out of bed to teach my kindergarteners, to intercede on behalf of my teammates, to go out to the bar when I’m exhausted and love the women and children trapped in the darkness. And often it is in these ordinary moments that He blesses me with the greatest gifts, the gifts that had I blinked I might have missed. These small, easily overlooked moments are the ones I will treasure the most when I look back on my race. The moment I watched 24 children joyfully rip open their Christmas presents with squeals of delight, the moments spent giving goodnight hugs and kisses to 15 Swazi girls, the moment I had the privilege of telling a Thai prostitute that she is beautiful, the moment two of my beautiful Cambodian kindergarteners took my hands so I would walk down the road to get a snack with them.
So I will fight for my last 3 months here. Fight to be faithful in the ordinariness of every day life. Fight to cherish the small moments He blesses me with everyday. And when I fail to do that, when I miss the mark, I will rest in the extraordinariness of my Savior and marvel at the grace He bestows on me each and every day.
