9/12/2015
I’m physically tired here in Guatemala, and it’s hard to say why.
I mean, we are working hard here and we have no end of jobs to do, including gardening, deconstructing houses, gardening, painting, teaching English, and folding fabrics. (I had an epic folding day this past week where I folded clothes, fabrics, and scraps and it filled an entire storage space. I felt very accomplished! 😉 )
However, we all are done at about 8 pm at night. Altitude may be making us more drowsy, but I also think there is another contributing factor.
We have been on the race for nine months.
We have been traveling for nine months. Meeting, working, and saying goodbye to people, in different languages, for nine months. We have done a plethora of different jobs in nine months. We have had five different teams in nine months.
And even if mentally we don’t know that, I think our bodies do. I think we are running the race, but seeing the finish line makes us start to feel the pebbles in our shoes, the jagged rocks that we slip on, even as we press harder with more intention.
But with this physical tiredness has come a lot of reflection. I know, and have known this whole trip, that I will miss this. I will miss everyone I have met. Even when it is hard, annoying, or exhausting, this is a unique experience that I will look back on as a turning point in my life.
I am praying for the now and praying for the future. But God added a new item to my prayer list: Pray that when I get home, I won’t shift out of “missionary” mode.
Not that I have to be always “on”, but that I would not be complacent in loving people only because I will be in my familiar homeland rather than a foreign country.
I noticed this when we had a layover in L.A. I wasn’t praying for the taxi cab drivers or for that woman at the airport like I have done in previous countries. I was more shy to go up to a stranger and speak with them.
Or the times where I am serving a host or my team, and I think I have grown in a certain way. Then it hits me–will I be this patient with my siblings or people I am familiar with while cleaning a kitchen? Will I still serve well when there is not deadline to the serving?
This month has already been a lesson in flexibility and humility. We live in a compound, and though we can go outside in the daylight, we are cautioned about the danger daily. An election just happened and it didn’t go well in the people’s minds. We have an armed guard named Roy at the compound now, never without his shotgun. We hear the sounds of gunfire and sometimes explosions every night that one of the workers said was for “protection.”
We live in a nice house but water is not consistent and we have rats. We even caught one and named it “Willow” before releasing him miles from our house.
We have no idea what we are doing each day, and the people we are working with are not forthright in their conversation or friendship. But we are learning our lessons and taking our challenges with some grace and creativity. Tonight we just discussed how we could better break down some cultural and work barriers and show the people around us that we care for them.
But I don’t want to learn these lessons and forget them when the race ends.
I don’t want to feel like I crammed for a very long and hard test, only to forget the information when I don’t think it is useful anymore in my life. My prayer is that what God has done to me, through me, and taught me on this race will take a deep, deep root. And will only continue growing.
And that I will have the grace and wisdom to recognize that in the times when I fail to remember what I was taught–when I forget who He is and who I am in Him–that it is not me taking steps back in my journey.
His good work in me has taken root.
And the root might simply be snagged on a rock in the depths of the dirt,
right before the stone breaks apart,
under the pressure of the persistent, indomitable vine.
Thank you all for your prayers. Please continue to pray for me and my team!
God Bless
