6 girls, one bathroom, 500 spiders

Day 2- Cambodia 

All of my roommates are undeniably cool.  Most of the foreigner students are 19-21 yrs old, and the other girl here is 26 like me.  I feel a bit childish at times compared to everyone, due to a mixture of my awkward joviality with overly animated expressions, but even in that I must lay down daily myself and take in Christ's likeness.  It's about 5am, breaky starts at 7, but I still have indigestion from yesterday.  After 4 hours of the bumpiest bus ride from siem reap to Battambang my body is still adjusting to the differences in time, weather, food and water.  Not to mention I've had an unceasing wave of lower abdominal cramps from that time of the month.  All this in mind I am still not convinced this is the hard part of my being here.  

Day 3, 4, 5

We start our program tomorrow.  I have a massive headache, 12 bug bites, dirt everywhere, stomach pains, a gash on my knee and so much fear...but God is with me.  I know I'm in His hands, and that brings me immense comfort.  We bought bikes yesterday, I got a red one.  Ok so I can't write much more bc I'm getting nauseous, but if you're reading this please keep me in prayer.  

Au revoir ....or more appropriately: chum reap lee!

J

First night in Cambodia, no bugs..yet.

Well for all who are curious, my hotel in siem reap does provide toilet paper along with the customary spray hose (have not tried it yet, but I'm sure I'll come around).  God is good, haha.

It's 5:11am, and I am scheduled to meet my staff in the lobby (aka the front door, haha) in about an hour and a half.  After about 10 minutes of trying to see if the shower would kindly turn warm, knob turning this way and that, I dropped a pretty steep level of comfort and let the icy stream sting my entire body from head to toe.  After the first few seconds it was hardly even noticeable.  All that fuss for nothing.  Sigh.  Once more I see how fragile I am in every sense; physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, logically, irrationally, and all the other -ly's.  By faith alone can I be brave, and by faith along I will bear fruit here in Cambodia.

I don't really know what to expect, so I'm expecting the unexpected.  Most of my team are families and most that are my age are women (daughters).  I still don't know if this is exactly where God was leading me, but if not I pray that I be shown grace and more grace to still be used and taught with this experience.  I know that there will be so many obstacles to my growth here (big bugs and their bites, cold showers in the early mornings, big bugs as meals, no toilet paper, humidity, did I mention bugs? Haha just to name a few), and so I pray that as I begin to peel off those things I consider mine (comfort, food, clothes, air, water, health, etc) I will replace it with an utterly naked surrender to Christ my Lord to supply all my needs the way He sees fit and not my way.  I pray to know Jesus and form a deep and serious relationship with Him, trusting Him with my very life, and walking into any situation with the confidence that my God is for me and with me so there's nothing to fear.

May the God of peace and joy fill your hearts on this day, all glory be to God, amen! 

Jamie 

Rest in the storm

Do we all, at one point, discover the deep depravity and desperation within us and then continue to see evidence of it throughout our lives once we discover just how much we need Christ?  Or does it become less evident after we surrender to Him our daily desires, our guilt, and even our sins?  I find it difficult to be ok with all that is in me in my darkest moments...so much so I wonder if I am even a Christian.  Or if I am, if my heart is almost there...the motive trying and trying to become right, what more could I do to help myself even more?  I guess my question is what must I do after Christ has given me the power to do something?  The answer is work hard, because although He has saved me, that I am no longer condemned, I will be a wiser steward to walk in ways that lead to obedience and a dying to myself.  That means working hard to do those things that are constantly in conflict with my body.  How much, though, can I do?  If in Christ I can do all, then I am beginning to think I may not be in Christ, and if not I am depraved and desperate to be in Christ.  So much fear...

When there is little I can do to change my circumstances or my "feelings/mood" I always reach for the illusion that sin will remedy things.  That's a lie, and it's rooted in fear, fear that makes sin my master.  Sin is not my master, and in Christ I am set free from such enslavement.  Though right now it feels hard to believe I will be still, and know that Jesus loves me, saved me, and that He is my Lord and Savior.  

I used to want to be a cream puff

We all have our ideas about everything, who God is, who we are, who they are, and even who we are not that are surprisingly incorrect upon closer inspection (usually).  We view things from a perspective of personal distance, meaning that we hardly find it necessary/comfortable/desiring to step out of ourselves and examine closely the tiny molecules of our characteristics.  For in such close inspection we see what we think is unimportant since it is so small, things like smirking, twitching, or yawning.  Even a slight veer of attention that reaps forgetfulness can resound significantly under the microscope.  My point is that we have only such a capacity to hold up and present to ourselves the "me" or "God" or "them" or "it", and that's not to discredit the means by which we reach such definitions.  We may read books, observe situations and people, think analytically and objectively, research and teach subjects (since teaching is a form of learning), play devil's advocate for opposing ideas, learn mathematics, science, astrology, psychology, exercise, hibernate, take medications, and earnestly seek out the truth.  We may do all or one of these things to formulate what we believe is true, but does that make it true?  Certainly not.  Logically speaking, truth is an absolute, one can not will water to be wood no matter how strongly the will to think in such a way is or becomes.  A better example, closer to home, would be that you may say the murderer is bad because they killed a man for his money, but upon closer inspection, what is bad about murder?  Is murder bad because a life is stolen?  Is murder bad because that person no longer exists in this world?  If so, then you would side on the idea that life is precious.  What you are trying to protect is this idea that life is precious.  So the murderer is bad because he defiles your idea by stealing a life that is not his.  Therefore we punish the man who breaks our rules that protect the precious life.  Consider now a mother and her child.  To her the child is more precious than life.  She has her rules as well for protecting the precious child.  Her child is dying from leukemia and requires extensive medical attention to prolong life, even if just for a few more months.  The mother has an idea that, to her, is so vehemently correct, the idea that her child is precious, more precious than her life, and subsequently (though not obviously aware of its being) even more precious than the life of the rich person she will murder in order to follow the rules that protect her precious child.  You may think now that I'm beginning to sound foolish or ludicrous.  And that is my point, I am foolish and ludicrous.  We all have our ideas and our perspectives, built up by whatever resources we get our hands on (for me those are books, people- both old and young, experienced and naive), but how much do we really know if each of us is trying to protect something that we think is precious, be that life, a child, our status, our credibility, our beauty, etc.  We then become colliding molecules raising pressure in our lives, as we clash and bounce from or to one idea to the next.  Now, there is a seemingly enlightening idea that pushes its way out of the cylinder and beyond our clashing puffed up ideas, and that is to have hope that there is something, someone that is there outside of the cylinder, seeing things from an infinite perspective where nothing clashes.  That hope is God.  Before you start dismissing God as a silly idea for weak minds, I ask you to define a weak mind.  By all definitions, I have a weak mind.  Sometimes I think strange things that don't make sense, I want things that are bad for me, I avoid things that are good for me, I get confused and unsure about very intricate issues such as ethics and philosophy, so to me, my mind on its own is weak; weak in that I need a stronger source to confirm things or teach me things that I could not do for myself.  God's word teaches me how to live, and how to see things more clearly from a perspective outside of myself.  This opens my mind up by miles.

       I want to live a life that is good and meaningful, but I can't seem to do that on my own accord because I'm pretty lazy and selfish, so perhaps I need some help....or lots of help.



       Historically speaking our ideas about right and wrong, good and bad have shifted and continue to move with abstract viscosity.  At one time we thought a king had every right to dispose of a man regardless of his reasons, because we had the idea that royalty was precious and our rules for protecting that outweighed our current idea that life is more precious than mere royalty or status. 100 years down the line we may find that life is more precious than one man's rash decision or dictatorship.  Point being, humans are fickle.

       All that to say, I recognize that what I wrote earlier could very well be flawed in more ways than one...maybe all of it is erroneous.  However, I do know that I could be wrong, and that I need God to help me see things more rightly.  

       When I was a child, I thought like a child, walked like a child, acted like a child, and said that I wanted to be a mermaid or a cream puff when I got "older".  I wanted that with every fiber in my being, thinking I was certain that, First off, it was possible, Secondly, that it was a respectable goal, and Thirdly, that I'd be happy as either.  Shall I emphasize my point even more?  haha.  If God has been around since AD 500, even if God has been around since 1892, He's still got so much more experience about things than I do.  I am still just a "child" if I view my position by God.  My desire to want to be a writer or my desire for health or even for all the hungry people in the world to be fed may not make the most sense in a view much wiser than mine.  Perhaps, PERHAPS (don't jump to conclusions when I say this, or be quick to judge what I say prefaced by a PERHAPS), but perhaps suffering in varying degrees gives some people the capacity to have what everyone in life wants at the end, a life of love and goodness and meaning.  If everyone got everything they wanted, health, wealth, and admiration or (insert current desire here), would that be enough?  Would that mean life was fulfilled?  Or do we not witness countless suicides by the very people who have what we spend so much of our lives trying to grab?  I don't know, I'm using one example, but there are so many things we avoid thinking about because it's convenient or easier for us.  We don't want to think that having very little makes us more grateful for things, or that being in tremendous pain allows us to feel tremendously loved when a friend is there to hold us, and so much more.  

       I am aware that even what I am writing could be false, and if you debated with me, I might try to defend my stance, not because I'm so sure that I'm right, but because I don't want you to make me feel inferior.  However, I'm not sure about a lot of things, and I am trying to learn how to listen without fear of inferiority, to love fearlessly, trust fearlessly, live my life fearlessly.  I used to want to be a cream puff, then I wanted to be a writer, and now I know that I don't know what I want, so I'm going to empty myself to be filled with God.

God's Word is a guideline for living, read it and see for yourself if life becomes more when you live by those guidelines.  Otherwise, keep living the way you're living if that's enough for you.

J

Peering into the well

I just returned from a brief week long trip to Beijing and Seoul where I got to spend consecutive days with my parents.  The time I spent with them showed me once again how little control we, as mere humans, have over others and even over ourselves apart from what our spirit enables us with.  In other words, without the spirit we are ravenous pigs trying to grab what we want when we want it and we want it constantly.  That want can be comfort, love, attention, recognition, affirmation, jealousy, admiration, confirmation, and perhaps for some that want can be anger or frustration, worry and doubt.  I fall into it like one upon looking down a deep well, I fall by example and by speculation.  Both land me in a puddle of despair from which I cry out for the only one who has the capacity to save me.  My mother and father may try to, my friends may make attempts, skilled professionals with ropes and ladders may give their all, but the big promlem is not that I am at the bottom of the well, but that upon being retrieved I always fall back in.  So, it is a repetitive, daily, hourly, secondly reliance on having a Savior who at at given moment will kindly have mercy upon me and retrieve me from the depths of the well again and again without hesitation or frustration.  Such a Savior has all my love, and when my love fails me or falls apart in a sea of entitlement, forgetfulness, vanity, or laziness, the well reminds me that I am saved by grace and not by my love.  Nothing I do, whether good or bad, will change my Savior's mind in saving me again and again, but for this reason I desire to fall less into the well, for perhaps what I am seeking down there was my Savior's attention.  However, if depravity is how He saves me, than joy in abundance must be where He desires me.  If I love His saving grace, how unfathomably will I be immersed in ecstasy when I feel his gladness in me!  Therefore, there is no more condemnation in me, but a hope that firms itself as I take steps away from the well and into Christ Jesus.  Looking up rather than down.  

I got a little carried away (as usual) with that analogy, but the time I spent observing my parents and their treatment of one another has just showed me that what we need, what I need, is not a good husband or obedient children or the affirmation that I will be a good mother, but it is simply that I need Jesus.  The more I see things the more I see how broken things are and that all along I was not alone in the brokenness, which made it all the more clear to me.  My parents are broken, they have a beautiful and strong marriage but it is not their security.  In fact, both of them probably fight their natural inclination to peer down the wells of their hearts, to want to grab from the other person what they feel belongs to them (ie: comfort, love, affirmation, admiration, etc) but the durability lies not in those things (though those are often products of their sacrifice of those very things), the strength of their marriage, to me, is found only in Jesus, through Jesus, all because of Jesus.  It may sound absurd to most people, the things I just wrote, but to me it could not be more clear.  I am broken and prone to wreck myself and the people around me, but when I love through Jesus, live through Jesus, speak through Jesus, respond through Jesus, forgive through Jesus, even make jokes through Jesus (as some jokes are sugar coated ways of being condescending) do all things through Jesus, then and only then will good things like joy come forth back to me.  As I live through Jesus it also becomes evident that there is nothing that can stand to threaten me, neither life nor death, for both belong in authority of Jesus.  

On the way back home from the airport a sister in Christ said to me that I reminded her of a girl named Katie Davis.  Katie is 21 years old and lives in Uganda fighting to adopt and save girls from poverty and loneliness.  She is from Nashville, tn and pretty much gave up her comfortable life, boyfriend, and any sort of American dream to live in a place all alone serving God by serving people.  She is nothing like me.  Yet I must have gave off some illusion of that, and if so I need to make it clear that there is nothing good in me aside from Jesus.  I can bet almost everything that there is also probably nothing good in Katie Davis apart from the grace and goodness God gave her to have such a heart and capacity to do what she is doing now.  So in that sense we may be alike, though in that same sense I am also like Hitler, a New York socialite, and the drunk guy at the bar. 

What we all share is that we all need Jesus lest we fall into our wells of despair.

Thank You Jesus for saving me again and again so that I could have the mind and hope to do Your good works.

J