A lot of times when you see pictures or videos from the Race, you mainly only see the good times and crazy experiences people have. Rarely does the public see some of the reality behind every day life on the Race. So with that said, I’m not going to sugar coat things. My month in Malaysia was rough to say the least.
For Malaysia our squad was split up and sent out to different parts of the country. My team and two of the girls teams spent our month on the island of Penang. We stayed at a YWAM base there and did ministry with them. To get to Penang you have to take a ferry from the mainland. At first I had really high hopes for our time there. Everything I had heard from people was how awesome Penang was.
After settling in, I quickly began to notice that there was definitely a gloomy presence that I felt being in this city. Malaysia is very much a mixture of cultures. There are Malaysians, Chinese, Indians, and of course backpackers from all over. This meant that there was a huge mixture of religion everywhere, and we got to witness this right off the bat. Our first actual day there, we were sent out by YWAM with a list of things to go explore to immerse ourselves in the culture. This included seeing a Chinese temple, Hindu temple, Muslim mosque, Catholic Church, and an Anglican Church all on the same street. They referred to this street as Harmony Road.
I didn’t realize until I got back to the base how much of a spiritual darkness I felt over this place and what just seemed to be hopelessness as so many people were just following these false religions. Over the next few days, God showed me glimmers of hope through some of the ministries we saw and how believers there worshiped. For me, this offered a lot of encouragement. I discovered that a lot of how I could help was through prayer for the people of Malaysia to find Christ and for the believers to be a light to them.
Over time, I began to notice myself getting into a slump again though. A lot of factors took place that continued to weigh on me and unfortunately I kept them bottled up for the most part. Ministry was very scattered, unlike Thailand where we had a schedule everyday and knew where we would be going each day. In Penang it was very much take it as it comes ministry which could be very frustrating because it was hard to plan around and know what you needed to be doing or where you needed to be. Often we would also have multiple ministries at the same time, so our team would be split up most days and rarely ever did ministry as a whole team. This was very exhausting as I never could find a pattern to get adjusted to. I felt like I was always spread thin and had to be prepared to stop what I was doing at any given moment in case of a change of plans. For me this is difficult to do because I have a one track mind and like to focus on one thing at a time. Once I have my mind set to something, I like to stick with it until completion. I definitely was not able to do that in Penang because of just how uncertain plans were. Ironically that is why it has taken so long to write this blog because I’ve had to step away from it multiple times. This has made it a challenge to want to pick it back up and complete it. I am determined to finish it though because I believe God wants me to be vulnerable and share my struggles.
I began to find it very difficult to want to choose into ministry and my team times because I wanted to do ministry in a way that I was comfortable with and I had freedom in. A lot of our ministries were late into the afternoon or even night. Sometimes we wouldn’t be back until midnight. This grew old for me quickly because I would have rather been doing ministries earlier or have a more steady schedule to work around. I was also beginning to struggle with a lack of freedom.
I knew coming on the Race meant that I would have to give up some of my personal freedoms, but I don’t believe any talks could have actually prepared me for what that really meant for me.
Every morning our team would get up and do devotionals individually, but together as a team. For me it eventually began to just feel like a routine that I was forced to do and not something I felt the freedom to choose in to. I began to feel as if I was just getting up and doing it to appease leadership and do what they wanted. I no longer felt the intimacy of getting up and spending time with the Father, but felt like I was checking something off of the list of things we were required to do each day.
Between that and having team times every day where it felt like there was always something we had to be doing or be bringing to everyone’s attention, I began to feel my freedom to choose a relationship with God slipping away. At this point it felt that I was just going through the motions of doing the requirements and keeping the peace. This was ripping away at my sanity though because I desired so much more than just going through the motions to get by.
After what seemed to be the longest month of my life, we were finally drawing near to the end of our time in Malaysia. Our three teams in Penang and a team in Chang Loon packed up to meet up with our other team that was in Kuala Lumpur. Here we were all together for a few days for a miniature debrief of our month in Malaysia. During this time, I had a one on one conversation with Christie, who is one of our squad leaders. We talked about how tough my month had been for me and the struggles I was facing. Something that the Holy Spirit placed on her heart to reveal to me was my desire to be in control.
I had never really stopped to consider what that meant for me in my life, but it clicked so well when we talked. I realized that growing up, my life had very many twists and turns. It felt like my life was very chaotic and was always like an emotional roller coaster. My household was very severed to say the least.
During my time on the Race, I have discovered so much already about things that hurt me and affected me in the past that I did not realize had such a great effect on my life. Because my life felt very chaotic growing up, I became very distant from my family and became more independent in my life. I took my life into my own hands because I felt that if I did things for myself, that I could control the outcome of my life. I believed that if I was in control of my life, that I could prevent the chaos from happening.
What I have discovered and what I should have realized all along is that no matter how much you try to make life your own, you can’t control the circumstances. Life is going to happen the way God allows it to and because we currently live in a sinful world, chaos is going to happen. People will let you down, people will hurt you, people are going to make mistakes. So much in life is completely out of our control that it is impossible to live a life without some chaos in it.
I realized that I was so desperately trying to control my life and situations, that I wasn’t giving it up to God and letting Him take care of my circumstances. I have always been one to get so bent out of shape when my life would start shifting and my peace would be disturbed. Something I am learning though, is that when the waves of circumstances are knocking you around and you feel yourself drowning in the sea of life, God is the calm in our storms.
This is something I’ve had to constantly remind myself in life and I am so quick to forget because it’s easy to trust God when the waters are calm. Once those moments come up in life that unsettle your world and stir the waters, that’s when true trust and reliance on God comes into play. It’s so easy for me to lose sight of that though because when problems come up in my life, I am so quick to want to either flee from the problems, or quickly pull my world back into place by myself.
When I try to take matters into my own hands and fix all my problems on my own though, I end up either exhausting myself or making matters worse. And so God is trying to let me know that He never intended on me to do this life on my own. He wants to take all our struggles and our pain and walk with us in the midst of that. He wants us to lay our burdens at His feet and trust that He will bring us through our battles in life.
To do that means I have to be willing to give up control over my life and say it belongs to God. I have to believe that even when I think I know what is best for me, that God is walking me through whatever situations I’m in for a reason. As I grow in doing that I can learn to find the calm in my storm. I can learn to be more flexible with my time and what life throws at me. I can learn to accept authority. I can learn to be fine when life doesn’t go my way or meet my expectations because I can lay those expectations down. I can find peace when my world gets shaken and life is unpredictable. I can know that God will guide me through my hills and my valleys.
