BIG

As I lather on my sunscreen I start to feel pieces of the dirt getting mixed in and creating something very similar to the small rubber pieces that get left behind from an eraser. It's all over me, dirt and sweat, it almost seems futile to apply sunscreen atop the layers of dirt that cover me from head to toe.  But I still do it anyway, perhaps out of a shameless habit, or maybe I think it will somehow matter...the trying...the trying will turn into pity and God will magically make it effective.  Again, all this is coming from a hot day, typing on my iPhone.  My thumbs barely able to touch each letter.  Week 1 has officially begun and we are learning about the nature and character of God.   But I gotta say, the repeating theme for me seems to be the bigness of God.  God from this angle is almost completely different from God in the states.  God is good wherever I go, but God truly shouts in our times of need, and living in a third world country has shown me what need on a daily basis looks like.  We wake up at 4:30am for our work duties and morning chores, we take turns using the bathroom for a courteous amount of time so that each of us gets a chance to wash up before heading out.  Some have work duties in the blazing sun, but everyone works to maintain the cleanliness and function of the base, most of all the duties require lots of manual labor (dusting, mopping, trash, heavy lifting, and all by hand...no one uses anything that requires electricity since it's super expensive here.  My tools are a broom, mop, bucket, trash bag, and several rag towels.  God is with me every morning, with every stroke of the broom.  He is there with me, guiding my hands over the floors, my feet swiftly moving, I am his hands and feet helping the body in whatever way I can.  It's pretty awesome, and at first I thought I would dread mopping, because I hated mopping when I was a server, but here I see it as something I do that makes my Lord happy, and that brings a smile to my face like a fresh gust of cold air on a hot day. 

Fellowship here is overwhelmingly good.  I live with 7 girls in a room that's small.  Yet I have never slept more soundly or comfortingly or just happily.  Living with these girls is oddly comforting, like always having friends around me in the night as I fall asleep...it's just nice haha. 

So sometimes a huge part of me just wants to be back in the states where the bathrooms don't smell, where my feet are always clean, and the air isn't caking dirt on my skin and clothes.  Sometimes I just want to shrink back into those comfortable things, and ignore the fact that I have a reason for my existence, a reason that calls me to serve others, to tell people about Jesus, and do things that I don't always feel like doing.  I want to do what I want to do all the time, but when I do that I am discontent with life, because a life of self is a life without meaning.  

I have somehow, at some point this past week, fallen in love with God like it was the first time.  Man it is so scary!  There's that verse about working out your salvation in fear and trembling, and that's exactly how I feel.  God is BIG.  God is so much bigger than I believed in my life, He's so much more than just a friend, a lover, a provider, a healer, He's all of those things, but He's also the God who sees people at their worst and then calls someone from across the globe to go help that person.  He's that big!  He's not just in one place catering to people according to their life styles, but He sees someone crying out for help, maybe it's a child whose  parents abandoned them, maybe it's a starving man thinking there's just no hope, maybe it's a suicidal teen, maybe it's someone in deep depression or apathy or no it's bigger, maybe it's an entire village that has no idea how things like love for someone is possible, it could be you right now in your room crying out to Him in your heart.  Whoever it is, God is big and He calls us to help one another, sometimes we are called to help people right in our hometowns, but our Great God also calls us to be His feet that rush to thousands of miles away to that child who's all alone in this world and to get on a plane, go to him or her, hold them and bring them the powerful truth that they are being invited to join the family of the Almighty God.  And when one more gets brought back to the One who created them, we can celebrate like it's nobody's bidness.  I mean, what's more epic than doing something for God....God?!!!  I am just blown away that there is such a thing!  I used to live to please my self, my wants, and my preferences...yea that never really panned out very well in the long run...but that was because I am not God, so whatever I do will be on a very human level...maybe sometimes it will be an ok thing,but never on a God level.  And I would rather have epic chapters in my life than ok ones.  

Lately, I have been speaking more with people, I feel The Lord putting me in situations that compel me to speak and I seriously feel like a trembling match...and my obedience to speak and also to listen is the swiping of the match against whatever that rough stuff is called that light it up. Haha.  I'm never sure what I'm really doing or what I'm getting myself into when I begin to speak about God or words of encouragement to someone hurting, but the more I just do it the more I feel God power just take control and it almost always leaves me excitedly trembling! 

Oh that I would be emptied for Christ to come and dwell more fully!  I don't want my God to live in the corner of a cramped heart, I want him to have everything, because the more I give to Him the more my life becomes an epic adventure.  Money is no problem, relationships are no problem, health is no problem, there's nothing that my God does not know about, and He loves me and I love Him so even if all of those things fail in my life, I don't care, they were temporary anyway, I care about what is going to be forever.  

I really just want to say to you, friends or people just reading this, that God is so big and He wants you to be about forever rather than the "for nows".  Maybe He is calling you to Asia, Europe, Africa, India, some small island in the middle of some ocean, haha, but man, life is about giving God all the glory with our lives.  I mean it's God, He is nothing short of awesome and amazing and epic.  So you live for Him you live awesome and amazing and epic lives.  

It starts with an honest prayer, over and over, not because God doesn't hear the first couple of times, but because you yourself don't hear the first couple of times.  Keep praying til you really hear what you're asking for. 

God keeps reminding me that He sees me, and He is calling me to Himself. 

J

Laundry

Day 4 or 5, I can't really recall haha.

Battambang is heating up.  Man.  It's God from here on out.  I'm almost liking the cold showers now, and I've sort of given up on being afraid of bugs and snakes since they are literally everywhere.  Let's see, sharing a bathroom is not that bad, (though I am the only one who has/wears shower slippers...and I don't plan to stop...having icky feet just feels too...well, icky)  sigh.  I know, I am learning to embrace the culture here, and so far I feel pretty adapted to everything except the bare feet and dirty feet thing.  I can't even think straight as I type this all out on my iPhone. So eloquence, if ever I had any, will now kindly exit the premises for the duration of my time here.  I'm just going to write as if my brain and my fingers were a pair of squabbling siblings.  A little bit irrational, a little bit emotional, tangents left and right, but in the end a fine display of inconsistencies.  

All the students here, including myself, are required to hand wash their clothes in large metal bowls that are also used for washing dirty dishes.  So before filling a bowl with soap and water I have to make sure there is no leftover food or oils clinging to it.  So we clean two bowls out, one for washing (with soap) and one for rinsing with just water. We wash once and rinse twice.  A harrowing process if you have heavy items such as jeans, towels, jackets....all of which I have.  Makes me want to live with disposable clothes...disposable clothes!  Biodegradable disposable clothes...by missionary designs. Bam.  That's how ill support my missionary life, through a multi billion dollar company that serves missionaries.  Anyyyyywho, as I was saying...laundry.  So it took about 2.5 hours for the entire process, leaving my biceps pretty cocky, and the rest of me dead as a nail.  I was so tired and kind of frustrated that I had to take so much time to do something that usually takes about a minutes to load (with a machine).  I was amazed that people had to do this.  Sounds insignificant maybe, but imagine washing your clothes by hand every two days because the weather and constant swirl of dirt being caked onto you forces you to unless you don't care to walk around ..caked in sweat and dirt...like a clay person.  A clean shirt reflects a clean heart.  ;)

So after my inner grumblings against God for having me in that situation, almost right after I found a brook in me that began to bubble.  They were glad bubbles, thankfulness and joy were beginning to flow out of my thoughts.  I realized that the time I spent hand washing my clothes was also spent simultaneously having a really good conversation with my two other roommates.  It was quite nice, like bonding (*shivers). I'm not good at bonding, but I desire to be good at it.  So all in all I think it'll be really good for me to hand wash my clothes, share a bathroom with 6 girls, eat every meal with the base, and  learn to be ok with constant fellowship.  Difficult as it may be, sometimes I just want to throw in the towel and just fly back home (and it's only been a week), but I really want To hear what God is saying to me.  And I know he can talk to me anywhere, but it's myself who can't hear very well when I am covered in self. The less I am the more He becomes, the quieter my soul, the louder He speaks.  I am here to quiet myself and listen to His words for my life. Then I'll go from there. 

Thank you for those who are praying for me! 

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