Mountains and Valleys, mostly Valleys

I have found it harder to write here than I had assumed. I have also found myself much busier than I was last year. I believe this is due to two reasons. One, I am one of the team leaders and have much more work to do. Second, I am better at time management and making sure I get done what is on my to-do list. Needless to say, keeping up with this blog slammed to the bottom of my to-do list this past month. I felt like I was just scrapping to get by. Or better yet treading water. That's definitely what it has been like here. Just keeping my head above the line, trying not to choke on the waves while breathing, barely. It's mostly due to the adjustment period of being back, figuring out this leadership business, fighting to have a semblance of a schedule, the start of ministry being crazier than the rest of the year and many other things. That's been this past month and a half. Oh STINT, how I have missed thee.

So, what's new? Well I do believe I have cried more this past week than I have in a long while. You see, there is this thing called the Valley of Despair. It is also known as culture shock. It's a normal part of adjusting to a new culture. And even if the culture isn't brand new, every time you enter into a new one, you go through the whole process all over again. I get to do these whole thing all over again? Yay! It's a hard thing about 2nd year STINT that this happens and the second time tends to be harder. This is due to a lack of the honeymoon stage where "everything is the best thing ever!" I mean, I had a honeymoon stage but it lasted a few weeks as opposed to last year where it lasted a good two and a half months.

So it goes like this: Honeymoon stage, Valley of Despair, then normal. Normal means you normalize to the culture. It is no longer the greatest thing or worst thing, just normal with its good and bad like your home culture. Everyone has to go through the valley to get to the "normal". What characterizes the valley? It is filled with frustration, confusion, tension and embarrassment. There is a tendency to have a unwarranted criticism of the culture and people. You also get to have a heightened irritability, Utopian ideas of your previous culture, a preoccupation with returning home, and much much more. Then you tend to respond by either Flight which brings the urge to avoid everything and everyone that is different or by Fight which is where you judge people and things that are different as bad or foolish.

So guess who hit the Valley of Despair this past week? This girl. I can honestly say I don't think I've ever been this angry this long. I'm just angry all the time. And frustrated and tired. I definitely haven't cried so often in a very long time. I don't want to go into too many details. Mostly because its just sin after sin after sin. It isn't really that edifying for anyone if I go into that. What is good to know though is I'm here. I will probably be here for some time too.

The most I can do right now is by faith cling to truth. That is, God wants me here. He loves this country and these people. He loves my team. He wants me to love as He loves, by faith. Even if I don't feel like it or haven't been loved well myself. Regardless of how people treat me or how I feel, I need to love them well. Simply because that's what God does and has asked me to do. This is unconditional love. This is covenant love and it is hard.

Of all the things I may ever learn on STINT, it will be how to love. How to love past myself, my sins, other's sins, all of it. That's where God's grace breaks in. I can't love like that but He can. He does. I will fail to love my team and the students I minister to. I will be selfish and desired to be loved more than love. I will be prideful and demand my rights. I will be hurt and fling around bitterness and guilt. Somehow, through this mess I may love and Christ be seen in me. Now that's grace. That through my awfulness and dung in my life, God's love could actually shine through and others experience a supernatural God that goes beyond our natural human nature.

God is pretty amazing and reminded me of that this week. He loves perfectly, listens perfectly, pursues perfectly. He creates perfectly, saves perfectly and redeems perfectly. He is the awesomeness in my life. He is my life source and blood line. Right now I feel this truth more than ever due to my desperation. I once heard a sermon on how being desperate is what drive us to Jesus. I must agree. Well, enough of my rambling. I don't know how to end this well since I'm still going to be a hot mess after this and tomorrow too. Maybe I'll let you know how that goes next Saturday. Until then my friends.

Soul Marrow

Sin is never a fun thing to deal with. Over the past week, I've had more of my sin shoved into my face than in a very long time. It's a constant thing. Every time I've spent time with Jesus, it's filled with this sin thing and Him working to dig it out. This is sanctification, I get it. But it sucks. And this year has just started. What will come when Spanish class starts, when in a few weeks ministry starts, when we fly off to Aruba and have to deal with everyone's different expectations for the time in the sun? I mean, I can see more of my sin on display right now just thinking about it. What will happen when my teammates start to really bring their conflict to me. Thus far, the sin I've been confronted with has all been brought up by Jesus. But I know there are things I am completely missing at this point. Wahooo!!! Man, I love walking with God but dealing with sin just sucks sometimes. It's the most humbling, "I suck" moments you can have.

Just for clarification, I will give a little more detail. This week so many things have left my mouth that would have been better off staying in or just plain not existing at all. The words range from sheer stupid to kind of mean or short, to the run of the mill "that's awkward and had no place in this conversation". I have been stressed, frustrated and not patient at all. And then I have taken it out on my team. My lovely team that doesn't deserve the backlash of my emotional typhoon or my sin issues.

STINT is about reaching people for Jesus. It is about taking a step of faith because God has called you to some foreign place for the sake of the Gospel. But it is also so much about refining, sanctification and just plain being made more like Jesus. The beautiful thing is in the midst of being humbled by my sin, God is shown to be oh so Holy Holy Holy and glorified in my mind and heart. I have found this to be so much about STINT, about walking with God. I knew this year would be harder. It's all I've heard from other STINTers who went two years. It's really not surprising that being stripped down and having more sin pulled out from the marrow of my soul is a part of the harder. Got to love the start to Round Two!

3, 2, 1... Here goes!

I never thought it would feel this normal. Like slipping into your favorite pair of slippers or those old sweatpants from ten years ago. Is this normal for it to feel normal? I don't really have time to stick with that thought as the oncoming Spanish overtakes it. I have to reply. "Queiro una agua, porfa." It continues. It continues through the pot hole roads and heat. It continues onto a bus filled with Reggeaton and broken seats. It continues onto a campus full of friends rattling off rapidly in harder-to-understand-than-on-the-plane Spanish. This is normal. This is my life.

This is what my life will be like for a year. I am excited to start round two of my STINT experience in Venezuela. I didn't think I'd be this happy to be back. I didn't think I'd remember this much Spanish to be able to communicate with my friends. I did count on Jesus showing me His love though and letting me know that no matter whether I love it or hate it here, it is where He wants me. That's something to be very thankful for. Here goes the start of this year...

Days in Waynesfield

Ten days. Nine days. Eight days. The countdown has begun. And the voice in my head says the day count perpetually throughout the day. I am not allowed to forget that we have eight days left. Eight days to be home with my family. Eight days to see friends I want to see before I leave. Eight days to buy things like ear plugs, wall hooks and peanut butter. Eight days to go to small group or church and see my wonderful church family here in tiny Waynesfield. It's constant.

We officially got our tickets three days ago. We leave on the 19th of September. I get one week of early fall before re-entering my endless summer that started last June. Don't get me wrong, I love summer and I love Venezuelan weather in a crazy person sort of way. I just never missed fall until I couldn't have it. Ain't that how it goes. We're now closing in on seven days. That's a week. I think I just had an internal freak out writing that.

There is something I really want to write here on this blog though beyond my seemingly obsessive thoughts. I am sad to leave. I am excited to go to Venezuela. It feels like I've talked about it long enough that it should have materialized before me by now. You know, "blah blah blah... my friend Haifa... oh and there she is now! Literally there's my friends and the colorful bus that plays ear breaking music! Wahooo!" That's unfortunately not how things went though it would have been interesting to experience.

Anyways, I'm excited to go back but sad to leave. That makes sense with leaving family and friends again. I don't think that actually gets easier with time. I may have gotten better at holding tears at bay but my heart has hurt no less during these goodbyes. That makes sense. What I am just in awe by is how sad I am to leave Waynesfield. Going into this summer I didn't think I'd feel this way about it. I really thought I would be screaming "get me outta here!" Nope, I'd actually like to stay thank you very much. God's funny, isn't He.

I've been in this town since second grade, whatever age that is. I grew up here. Some of my best friends come from this place and it was through His intervention in this community I came to know Jesus. Then college came and Columbus is this dazzling city where so much growth happened. Plus, I just sort of turned into a city girl. I love to walk and ride a bike to places that are so close and sometimes far. The vibrancy and atmosphere won me over before I even got to Columbus.

When I came back this summer I longed to live in C-bus. I remember staying there for a weekend early on and crying as I drove back to Waynesfield. Somewhere during the four years of college I had transitioned from Waynesfield being my home to Columbus being my home. Granted family wasn't there but in terms of where I felt that I belonged, it was Columbus. It makes sense considering how much I had grown while there and just simply learned to really claim a place as my own little niche in the world. This summer God slowly brought my heart to reside a bit more in Waynesfield, probably more than it did even before I left five years ago. I would still love to live in Columbus again. I think it's a great city. But as for belonging and growing, well that can happen anywhere, including a hometown.

I have loved meeting with so many of my ministry partners this summer. I'm not saying that to just be nice either. It was a genuine form of community across this town, and beyond, I couldn't have imagined. Last summer it was nice to meet people or explain my passion for missions in Venezuela. This summer it was amazing to share what God had done this past year and hear more about what He was doing in people's lives right here in Waynesfield and the surrounding area. I loved hearing people's hearts for local ministry, family, and friends. They encouraged me greatly and prayed for me much in regards to my own ministry. This was with many people I hadn't really talked to or met before last summer, even if I had known their names due to the small size of this town. It has been an amazing experience to meet these people and see God at work in such a small place.

I have even been given the privilege to go to a small group the past month from my home church. It's the first small group for the church and has been such a blessing for me to be a part of. To share with people in different places in life, come together and study the Word of God and pray is so powerful and I have learned much. To experience God is always powerful and to do that with others is better than a Reese's cup. (I have been peanut butter deprived this past year so that seems like a drastic thing to me).

God is doing so much in this small town and in my home church. I am just flabbergasted by what I've witnessed Him do in a few months and am excited to see what He continues to do here. I will continue to pray for this town and that God's Holy fire would fall down just as it did when Elijah called it down. I pray revival is nearing Ohio, nearing Waynesfield. I find even now I cannot put into words how encouraging, loving, and supportive everyone has been to me. This is such a blessing from God. I did not except it nor could have imagined at the beginning of this summer how good it would all be.

God is good and He truly does bless us. He is preparing me through this time for the upcoming season of Venezuela and I am glad He choose to do it here, in Waynesfield. I am sad to leave this place and think that's a wonderful thing. That means I was here, really here, where God wanted me to be. What better thing than to be where God has you?

Welcome!... to some trash in my sewer

I've never had a blog like this. I mean, I have a blog, but never one of this nature. Yay for new learning experiences! It's funny because a few days ago I felt like I had so many things to say here but now I don't know where to go on this blank page. I guess I want to preface this with, "I haven't written for an audience in over a year."

Last year in Venezuela God did many things through me and in me. To many people I've talked a lot about the "through" part but the "in" is a little harder to get to. A good place to start is He humbled me. He humbled me in ways I don't even know yet or fully understand. One way I do understand already though is my writing. Last year God stripped me of my writing. Or more specifically my performance and pride wrapped up in writing. I had started to write less for God and more for people in every way possible.

Now writing for an audience is one thing but writing to impress those people is a whole different thing altogether. Complements of my writing had gone to my head in a balloon effect kind of way. Somewhere along the line it became about me and how much I could awe people. Not good. There was also this other interesting thing going on with my writing as well.

I connect greatly with God through writing. When I journal, write poetry or stories, He shows up and teaches me things I just couldn't understand before. That's good, right? Well, sometimes in an awesome Christian community people ask you how your walk with God is going or what He is teaching you about lately. I am ever grateful for that. But I had started taking my writing and saying "See, this is what God is teaching me!" or "Read and see how awesome my walk with the Lord is!" Again, not good. I had started to perform in my walk with Jesus and writing became my sick means to do so.

This brings us back to last year in Venezuela, pretty early on actually. God put a writing block in my head so big that I couldn't even try to write. When I did I just got frustrated and angry. I stayed that way about my writing for most of the year. I didn't have the eyes to yet see what God was really doing. It started to become telling though once I found peace in being broken before God and others. When I didn't have to have this awesome piece of poetry that went deep or a perfectly coiled journal entry that I could read before others. No no. I just had to be. With God and with my brothers and sisters. That was hard. That was humbling. I no longer had anything to "show" for my walk with Jesus. It just had to be.

Coming home this summer was enlightening to say the least. God started letting me know the why behind all of this writing business. He took me into the depths of His mercy. It is a merciful thing that He didn't let me write this past year. He is merciful for not letting me go deeper into performance in regards to my walk with Him or my writing. He is merciful. And then there's His grace.

He pours out His grace as if it were a fully opened fire hydrant gushing into the vile sewers. Let's be clear about this. He is the life saving fire-hydrant water and we are the revolting, foul, odious, nauseating sewers of sin needing to be so filled with grace-water that it brings out the nasty onto the surface to be swept away instead of hidden deep. He pours out His grace. If grace is receiving what you didn't earn, then boy is it a grace-filled thing that I am writing again. He gave me the go ahead on writing some things. There are still poems and stories that have yet to see the light of day and might not ever be seen by other eyes. I think that's more than okay. After all, He is teaching me that I write for Him and Him alone.

Even this, directed to you, a very specific audience which is seemingly not God, is for Him. If it weren't I'd be dead afraid of telling you what I just did. I mean, I'm still in this. We're not out of the woods yet on me being stripped of my performance writing. Hence why no poems or prose or stories will be posted for awhile. But in the meantime I hope you enjoy this blog and my adventures with Jesus and in Venezuela.

This is not what I had thought I would write. Maybe I'll write that another day this week. This is just what needed to be said so you would know where I'm coming from with writing this blog. This is not an easy task. Then again, neither is following Jesus. Peace and grace and I pray most of all love to you my friends.