Giving Up The Ghost.

Well, it's safe to say I've never been so tired in my entire life.

I'm exhausted, really, and in every sense of the word. I'm realizing, though, how to be okay with that for the first time in my life, and not make excuses for it, or try to justify it, or passively ignore it and over-exert myself. I'm learning how to rest and how to give up the fight. Last Friday, I had an unexpected anxiety attack, the first in many years, and I could've crawled out of my skin, said, "game over. the gig is up", boarded a plane, and just gone home. 

I've seen evidence of this dryness everywhere, not only in myself, but in the people I've encountered and loved throughout the world. This month has been one that has rocked me, and allowed  me to see the true depravity and darkness of humanity being let loose, full throttle, in every direction.

I cannot begin to tell you the immense amount of pain I've walked into in our ministry this month. It has struck a cord so deep within me, and I am mourning for the women and "lady-boys" we've met in the bars of the "Red-Light District" here in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Even still, I know my Father in Heaven feels the depth of that pain to degrees I can't even begin to imagine. A Father, looking down on his precious children, watching all that they are forfeiting for the love of money, acceptance, pride, and pleasure, when He has offered them life to the FULL. And then I think about the way they are ostericised from society because of their choices, mocked, abused, and abandoned because of the trap they've fallen into {or, as I've learned, have often been pushed into by their families in order to pay off debt}.

It reminds me of this amazing quote by C.S. Lewis: 

And isn't that so true?
Nevertheless, it really does seem as though there is no way out for them.

Finally, I think about the men who "buy" them, the men who are so lost and hurting they'd travel thousands of miles around the globe to partake in this sin, all in hopes of filling a void or a deep pain in their own hearts. At first, it was nearly impossible for me to view the men this way. Instead, I wanted to run up to them, punch them in the face, and scream at them, telling them they're selfish bastards with no hearts. But God quickly shifted my heart to view them in love and as human beings, sons of a dear mother out there somewhere, people of choice.

Once this became obvious to me, God began gently digging up much of my own pain and bitterness from men in my past and even my present. He's been healing me from the anger and resentment, from the deep wounds of betrayal and abandonment. Yes, even now, He's asking me to view them in a different light. He's asking me to view them as my family, and as brothers who "know not what they do" {the very words uttered by Christ as He hung dying on the cross}. He's reminding me of the plank in my own eye.*

I can't say it's been an easy fete. I can't tell you I've always loved well, or loved at all. But I'm trying to give up the ghosts of my own past in order to walk alongside of these men in the things that currently haunt them. I never thought I wouldn't want to leave in 5 days. But I don't. I never thought I'd actually be prayerfully considering coming back at some point in life. But I am. I never thought I'd view people as saints rather than sinners. But I do. And I never thought I'd say I'm called to adopt a child from Thailand. But I am!