I talk about writing this a lot, and haven’t yet. It seems that every time I don’t write about it, something else happens to force me to abandon yet another thing. So I’m writing this now, in the hopes that I’ll quit jinxing myself.
By quitting my career, leaving my friends, family, and community, and packing up my life into a backpack for 11 months, I thought that I was doing fairly well at abandonment. I limited my entire closet to 5 outfits (for the entire year), 1 pair of shoes, bought a thin sleeping pad to be my bed, and said my goodbyes. Not going to lie, I was proud of this. I thought the hard part was over, and even maybe, this made me a little bit holier.
I was believing a big, fat, LIE.
I was, in fact, no more holy by doing this. Actually, this made me a lot more selfish about the few possessions I still had. I realized this the first day after we had landed in India when someone asked to borrow some soap. That’s not a big deal, but it sure seemed like it in that moment. I started to give in to the starvation mentality – when you’re not sure when you’ll get more of something, you become miserly with what you have. It’s so stupid.
After having this happen several times, I realized how much of an impact my miserly mindset was having on my life. I started to try and rectify this, but still struggled with it.
I’ve become better at letting go of my possessions, realizing that they don’t matter in the long run. However, as I improve at this, I’ve realized that abandonment doesn’t just apply to possessions. It’s a mindset. I’m still learning to abandon things – mainly my expectations and wishes. Living in community with seven other women is great but even that presents its challenges. Sometimes, I just wish I could sleep in a normal bed, or just have some personal space. But these are the things I chose to leave behind. Personal space, expectations for ministry, team dynamics, and schedules are some of the main things I’m still learning how to abandon. It’s not easy. And just when I think I’m doing better at this, something happens to challenge me. This week, it was my one pair of shoes and my camera breaking. A few months ago, my hard drive with all my pictures and memories from the first four months crashed. While it stinks that these things happened, it’s been good to challenge me.
I’m still learning and growing in this. After all, Jesus asks us to abandon everything to follow Him (p.s. this definitely does not mean you have to go on the World Race to do this). However, this is just something that I’ve been growing in and thought I’d share.
Duct tape fixes everything… even chacos
*At this point, after writing for 5 minutes, my computer crashed, (ironically) and I realized I’m still working on abandonment.*
