I want to live a normal life. I want to stay close to my family. In California. Where I can decide at the spur of the moment to hop in my car and find myself basking in the sun or snow later that day. Where my friends are. Where the church I love is. Where I grew up. Where my niece and my nephew are becoming real people and I get to be a part of their lives. To have a job where I work 8-5 and have weekends off. Where the opportunity for marriage and a family seem more realistic. I want to be normal. But what I want just doesn’t matter anymore.
There is something that happened in my spirit when I saw 11 countries, ministries and needs in the short time span of a year. Before leaving for the race, it was something that I wanted to do, but didn’t want to have to effect me as much as it did. Something that I looked for and knew was right and good to be exposed to, but that I didn’t want to rock my world so drastically. For the first nine months of the race, I was preparing to come home at the end of it all and return to work. A job that I love with kids and a staff of co-workers that I cherish. God’s given me the gift and joy of sign language and being able to use it to interpret. I know this and I’ve always been grateful. But the thought of returning started to freak me out. I saw it as being a slave to a schedule. A place. Especially after all of the freedom that I had this past year to worship, serve, love, and live as I wanted. Maybe not in every way, but to be free. No constraints. It wasn’t long after a freak out session that I had in Nepal during month nine dealing with coming home to the American society working constraints that I went to China.
Here’s who I met. Here’s where the story shifts gears…
Upon meeting the kids at Eagle’s Wings in Jiaozoa, I knew immediately that I was supposed to go back there. Within the first week, I was crying myself to sleep thinking about how I would have to say good-bye. I’d already said enough good-byes this year and didn’t want to say any more. So I cried. Cried for the relationships that I would have to stop forming. Cried because I wanted to make sure that they are loved. Cried because I would miss them in my life and being a part of theirs. Cried because I thought that I could do so much more there for them and with them if only I could extend my time there. Cried because I immediately wanted more for them than I’d ever wanted for myself before.
If you’ve read my last blog about the kids in China, I think you’ll see how they captured my heart. (And if you haven’t, I ask that you do.) That something clicked in me there unlike any other country or ministry that we had done. That ‘something’ was the Lord. He broke my heart for them, showed me the joy that they could have, and put within my heart an immediate love that I had never experienced before. A genuine desire to help the helpless. To help people with bigger spirits and personalities than their bodies will allow.
My team’s last morning there, we worshiped on a rooftop. Grey, polluted sky. A breeze in the air. Chilled. I looked out over that city, in the direction where most of the kids lived and heard God. Not audibly, but a soft nudge. Words. Exact, clear words. “Come back. I’m not done with you being here yet. You have more to give them. You want to really live for Me? Do this.” I knew when I heard them that they were changing my life. I had considered it, but had never committed. With my eyes open, still stretching them far into the direction of the kids as they were getting ready for school that day, I prayed aloud while the rest of my team sang and prayed silently. I confirmed to do what God was leading me to do. Come back to China. Hesitant but excited. Apprehensive but hopeful. This roof that I was standing on suddenly didn’t seem like it would be so far away… I’d be standing on this roof again. As I said good-bye to the kids that day, as sad and as hard as it was, it didn’t feel like the end. I told my main man, Fu Chang, that I would be back. As he scooted and jumped his way over to me on the ground, drooling and unable to speak, I hugged him and told him I’d be back. Even though he couldn’t understand my English, God heard me. I heard me. And in those breaths, I committed to return. Fearful to say the words aloud because then I would hold myself to them. I want to be a woman who is honest and loyal and committed to her words. So when I said them, it meant more than just hope and a want. More than a maybe. More than a “if it’s in God’s plan”. It meant YES. Yes to God’s calling.
I am called to China. I don’t know for how long or all that He will do through me and to me there. All I know is that I am called. And I’m going. My simple words saying I’ll be back are my yes. Yes to China. Yes to learning Mandarin as best as I can before I go there. Yes to leaving my friends and family again. Yes to hardship. Yes to living in a Communist country where the freedom to worship God does not exist. Yes to living in a city where they have never seen white people and stare incessantly every time I step outside. Yes to food I don’t love. Yes to more attention than I crave. Yes to being only one of two American, English speakers in my village. Yes to loneliness. Yes to depending on God to be my sole strength and greatest listener. Yes to having less in order to gain more. Yes to deeper intimacy with Jesus. Oh, for a heart that aches for more and more of Him. My Creator. My Savior. My King.
(My last day with Fu Chang)
This time I’m not going with 35 other people and living with 10. I’m going alone. To partner with Eagle’s Wings and serve, volunteer, just be there and give my life for however long God will call me to stay there. Fear creeps in. Loathing of China and it’s non-western culture seeps in. Then I hear Him tell me that all the reasons I don’t want to go are the reasons I must go. A country, a land, a government regime that has been so oppressed by the enemy that there is no freedom to share Jesus with the people who live there… is not okay. That land is God’s! And if I truly pray and want to see “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, then I must go to that land and bring the Kingdom. Maybe it’s just me. But there are others there that have said “maybe it’s just me”. But there are more and more of us. I may not work together with them daily, but we are bringing the Spirit of the Lord who dwells in us when we say YES to China. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom.”
These kids with disabilities can have freedom even in the constraints of their physical bodies. They can have freedom even under a Communist regime. There is a hope. His name is Jesus. That is my hope. So here I go. Statement bold and sure. I’m jumping in…
I’m going back to China in July!!!
(Click on the link below to watch my teammate’s video of Life in a Day of China to get a better glimpse of what is drawing me there again…
http://vimeo.com/52460238)
