At first, I was not sure what I thought about this first month. Guatemala was the kick off to an entire year’s worth of met and unmet expectations, pains and joys, sickness and health, and loving on people around the world. There have been different challenges for each of the people on my squad, and we have all faced some fears and joys within this short month. Like myself, I have come across three absolutely humongous spiders and have not had a heart attack (yet). Along with learning how to live in a community or trying to survive riding a chicken bus, I have found that God had an underlying lesson for me in the midst of ministry.
At the daycare, we were given a project. It consisted of chipping off the paint of a wall that is about 40 ft. x 12 ft. with scrapers and metal brushes. We then had to paint the wall completely white, and finally we were able to paint whatever we wanted. The mural is now finished, and let me tell you, it is beautiful. Now if one were to come to the daycare, take a look at the wall and give it a good assessment from a third party point of view, we would most likely not receive any kind of reward. But in the eyes of myself and the teams that completed it, it is the damn Mona Lisa of daycare murals.
It was during one of the last days that we were working on our mural that I realized that God was going to use this not only for the joy of the children, but also as a metaphor for myself.
That original wall was my former self. It had a painting on it, but it was starting to peel along the edges and was in desperate need of something new. It’s going to take a lot of work from both me and my teammates to get all the old and peeling paint off. I need to chip away these pre-conceived and twisted ideas of myself, the labels that have been slapped on by other people that thought they had the right to do so, and the former person that I sometimes feel ashamed of having been. It is no longer relevant to my well-being and to the person I am today.
I remember the day we were finished with the white paint clearly because I don’t think there has been anyone in history that was as excited to see that white wall as I was. It was new and shiny (and a bit blinding with the sun’s reflection and all). Through God’s mercy and forgiveness, that wall of mine gets painted white as snow. In this particular case, with two coats. I get a blank slate with absolutely nothing left that would indicate there was a different painting there before.
And finally, I get to paint that wall with whatever colors, ideas, emotions, and inspirations I want to. I get a brand new start and that would not have been possible without the help of my team, and without grace. So while I may not have known what the purpose of that new mural was at first, I know now that I had some things to learn. I am so grateful for the time I have had in Guatemala. It is hard to think that it is over, and it was even harder to try to explain that to the kids who we have grown to love and look forward to seeing everyday. From here, we just have to pray that those kids continue to experience love and joy from the Lord even after we are gone.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old is gone and the new has come!”
2 Corinthians 5:17
