For various reasons, the week just past has been a garish collusion of my frail humanity. On the eve of a lavish gift, this once-again adventure to the other side of the word, I find am undone by a sense of complete inadequacy for any task at all.
The pressures of responsibility have been crushing in particularly draining ways of late. The results have been that my personal character flaws and natural inabilities have come squishing out the sides like too much relish and ketchup on a too-big-for-your-mouth hamburger. Seems I've been wiping up one mess after the other.
Too many important things forgotten, too many details overlooked, too much harm done, albeit inadvertently but just as woundingly, to the very human souls I've been sent to love and lead. My sense of self is distorted and refracted in the mirror-list of all the mistakes I've made this week, and it's not a pretty sight. Embarrassment stings. Regret stinks. Self-loathing lurks in dusky places, waiting for a chance to take a piece of me home for a trophy.
And in the middle of it all, I'm packing for Thailand.
Doesn't seem right somehow. Shouldn't life-restoring missions trips be the reward of those who've executed their smaller ministry tasks properly? Shouldn't there be a sense of sending those who've been faithful with little out into the adventure that is the much more that God wants to give us? Shouldn't I be strong and confident and capable on my own turf before I'm allowed to trip all over another culture?
I guess not. Because I'm none of those things right now. Yet for some reason, God is letting me go back for a fourth time. That's four. Four times around to the other side of the world and the impossible delights of small-statured but huge-faithed kingdom warriors who have let me be their friend.
Funny, but I am right back where I was on that first trip in the winter of 2008, when God deconstructed my heart in a painful but necessary renovation that allowed for the expansion of His plans and purposes for 15 orphans in the foothills of the Himalayas. Right back to the awful, wonderful understanding that this is not about me in any way whatsoever, but all about Him being God in any way He so chooses, and me going along with it.
So off I go, without any illusions that I do so because of anything that comes from me, and a sharp awareness that I very clearly do not deserve this.
I promise to listen to the lessons of this particular trip. I promise to let Him be my sufficiency and allow His grace to fill up the gaping holes left when I've given all I've got. I promise to come back something better - more humbled, more loving, more faith-filled, more yielded, more bold for God - as God might choose to provide these things for me to receive. I certainly have good teachers in all of those things in the astonishing brothers and sisters there.
Tomorrow the gift begins. But right now I will make a good attempt at sleep.
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Tonight, the story we read in Abby's Bible was the one where Samuel goes to anoint a son of Jesse as the new king.
"When they arrived, Samuel took one look at Eliab and thought, 'Surely this is the LORD's anointed!' But the LORD said to Samuel, 'Don't judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn't make decisions the way you do! People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at a person's thoughts and intentions.'" 1 Samuel 16:6-7
Any human inadequecies you may be feeling tonight will not stop God from completing the good work He has started in you! The love you carry for each of the children in Hot Springs is reason enough to go. Your thoughts and intentions are to go and to be "Aujhan Ruth" to each of those sweet faces.
I love you so much, Mom, and I am inspired by the capacity to love which you have shown, and continue to show. We'll miss you while you're gone, but we can't wait to hear all the wonderful stories God has waiting for you!
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