I have so many questions. I guess it feels like I am just making stuff up and calling it "faith" or "spiritual warfare" or "Gods voice". This is just so opposite of my normal life. Things are hyper optimistic, I learn to do anything with a grateful heart...but it does not come naturally. I mentally fight to stay in the arena of this outreach.
I wonder, almost shamefully, if God sees my broken heart. That I feel like I have been left. Abandoned. Forgotten.
If He is really God, then I can't hide anything from Him anyway.
I hate it here.
Not all the time, but most of the time. Especially when I'm burning up in the sun like a lava rock, just coated in perspiration. Or when I am scratching the huge bug bites all along my legs and arms, or when the beetles cannon ball into my food and hair, or when I'm hand washing my laundry and it just smells disgusting.
Walking to church for 20 minutes on the dusty trash laden road was miserable. I had my usual dri fit outfit on, a plastic fan and a hat. I was so ... I felt like I deserved better. I was angry at God for having me here when He clearly told me that He loved me. I did not feel loved in that moment, I felt alone. I felt hot and so, so, so uncomfortable. I was suffering, and this sounds dramatic but even death sounded like a reasonable option to get out of here. To prefer death to preh vihear....geez. I mean it's not even that bad, but there's something else going on.
I'm dying. Little by little I am dying.
It's not about me anymore...and that part of me that wants it to be is fighting to stay alive.
Everything freaks me out here. I don't even want to look at the ceiling of my room and bathroom because I know I'll see something that will make me very uneasy. Trash is everywhere. Dirt is everywhere, the air I breathe in is disgusting and I am beginning to smell too. The "showers" are not really clean, the water is not clean, and I feel so helpless a lot of the times. I am dying here...
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So this morning it started pouring refreshing cool rain. Not the humid rain that sucks, but the kind of rain you want in Cambodia because it washes away all the dirt and brings a cooling for the day.
I don't think this is normal weather behavior so I like to believe that God heard me yesterday on the walk to church. It's either that or chance, and what were the chances that this would happen? Wouldn't it make more sense that God heard me and changed the weather? :)
Believing it was my King who saw and heard His daughter makes me really grateful, joyful, and confident that God is with me, I am empowered to keep going strong, while the other (thinking the rain is by chance) makes mildly relieved...like a flat soda in a thirsty moment. But, to me, the truth matters. So what is the truth?
Perhaps it is just chance.
I will be grateful still, because God had planned this out from the beginning for my good. He knew I would be having a miserable time walking to church in preh vihear in the heat, He knew beforehand because He's God. There is nothing that exists or happens outside of Him, because He is before all things (Colossians), and in Him all things hold together. So call it chance if you choose to, but I believe in God, my God who sees me, and is for me. I believe that every moment I suffer He is aware, and knows beforehand with a bigger plan in mind than what I see.
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2 weeks down in preh vihear, 2 more weeks to go, and then we take a bus to Thailand where we will stay for 3 weeks with the Burmese refugees. I'm excited for that, but until then I just have to keep praying for God to transform my mind about this place. I do love it at times, for minutes, because of the people, but I want to love it forever because God loves this land and the people living here.
I've got a stomach illness, so I'm feeling pretty weak. It has given me ample time to think, reflect, and just converse with God. Questions arise.
What do I do now, God?
"for it is God who works in you,
both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent,
children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation,
among whom you shine as lights in the world,"
(Philippians 2:13-15 ESV)
I am a daughter of light.
All I do is shine.
Jesus made the sacrifice, what I'm going through is not a sacrifice, it is His mercy. I just need to follow Him and obey, and once in a while I'll get lost or I'll stray behind, but I am never too far from His vision. He who is everywhere brings me back to Him. I am blessed. His light in me is all I need to be.
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