Fleeing

People say that a moment can change a life, and it's true. Sometimes several times in the course of a day!

A long two-day meeting came to a pause when it was announced that there was a girl in the community that had been recommended to come to KGS. Her mother died years before and her father sat in prison serving a life-time sentence. Her aging relatives were not able to support her so she was taken to a government shelter for temporary help. Could she come to KGS, the shelter wanted to know since they could only have her there for a limited time? Of course the answer was a resounding "yes" and within 24 hours "Khanom" arrived at at our home.

The girls were so excited to show Khanom around and help her get used to the way of living here at KGS. They showed her the kitchen, garden, her new shared room, and every nook and cranny in between. She smiled politely but one could notice the scared and uncertain look on her face as each new activity was introduced to her. As we gathered for vespers she quizzically looked at the Bible in front of her, probably seeing one for the very first time. The songs the other girls sung with such excitement had never been heard by her ears as she sat back and watched.

Even though everything was so new, she now had a place of comfort and care. Before food might or might not be set on the table in front of her but now every meal was assured. She had sisters to share her secrets with and friends to learn useful skills. Her hair now sprinkled with lice could become beautiful and braided and her body washed with fresh soap. She was home. No, we all knew it didn't feel like home just yet but the girls were doing their best to make it feel that way as soon as possible.

The next Monday came and off we went to pick up the girls from school. As we pulled up to Khanom's school, a few of the girls ran inside to find her. Minutes passed and finally they came out with troubled looks on their faces. "We can't find her" they said as a staff member jumped out of the car to continue the search. Nearly thirty minutes passed before it was announced that Khanom had gone to her old house with a friend. A motorcycle ride later and again the staff returned, Khanom still not in toe. Finally we had an explanation: "She doesn't want to come back to KGS. She said she doesn't like that now she has responsibilities and chores. She wants to run free in the village and we're going to have to talk with her family in hopes of convincing her to come back."

And so we waited and still wait because at the time of writing this, Khanom still has not returned to KGS. She seems to want to stay independent even though that means danger and possible abuse. If she comes to live at KGS, her schooling through college is basically secure but by staying with her family, such a future is doubtful at the very least. At the moment is may seem the more comfortable choice, but remaining at home puts her future continually in the balance.

Doesn't she see the wrongness of her choice, we might be quick to judge, and yet do we not sometimes do the exact same thing?

We run.

We hide.

We resist change.

There a deep desire to be loved and to be known, but at the same time there is an equally strong desire to be independent and keep things the way they are at that moment in time. Relationships with others, our jobs and careers, and of course our relationship with God all see elements of this involved with every decision. It's more than just choosing self or selflessness. It's about choosing comfort and what feels like security.

Since coming to KGS, feeling out of place and sometimes even a little scared threads itself through most of my weeks. If my home was as close as Khanom's I think I would have been right besides her, running back to where I know I belong. Unlike Khanom, staying here doesn't necessarily guarantee me anything and the end result of my time here may not end up as I hope. But instead of hopping on a plane and saying goodbye to Thailand, I stay.

I stay for the girls who need to see a staff member caring for them who loves Jesus as they do. I stay to bring change to their sometimes repetitive days. I stay to grow myself in the times of trials and to learn from these girls I consider like my own. I stay to show them Jesus and to thus give them the opportunity, both girls and staff, to give their lives to Him. I may be uncomfortable, but some things in life are worth the discomfort and to me these girls are worth all that and more.

Unmasked

Love is a magical thing.

Oh I hear the sighs and the "oh brother" statements coming from you guys but before you judge my thoughts towards relationships, hear me out. One sentence cannot describe the overflow of my heart.

When I first began dating my beloved, everything was pretty magical. Not many people end up saying yes to the dating question as the sun rises over a hundreds year old Medici manor in Florence Italy. Few people can go from a single thought of "He really is cute and attractive" to "Wait, could he feel similar" to "Let's pursue this and see what happens" within the course of less than 10 days and then have that sunrise happen exactly a week later. Was it rushed? From the outside it certainly seemed that way and even to us it seemed to be a whirlwind, but even now with hindsight, I have no regrets. We had talked for hours, prayed a good bit, and since we already were friends, it all seemed to be the way to go. Even the summer was pretty perfect even in the moments we realized neither of us were by any means perfect. Even more talking and more time spent by each others sides progressed our relationship so that by the time I shipped off for Thailand, we both were counting on this love to last forever.

But then a funny thing happened. Long. Distance. Relationship...

I don't know how many of you have gone through something similar in your past (or even present) but my condolences to you! Am I right when I say that NO ONE every prepared you enough for that experience?

In math there are always equations that just don't seem right. Like when you're just learning Algebra and suddenly x and y decide to join in on the fun and you're staring at the page wondering how anyone ever thought this could equal an actual number. That's what those first few weeks, okay at least the first month if not more seemed. For our relationship equation, you have two people who both have quality time and physical touch at the very top of their ways to feel loved. You also have two people who find that being long distance has brought to light the fears and hurt of past relationships. Not to mention one of them happens to be very emotional and gets stressed out way to easily (I'll let you guess who...) Add to the mix a heavy school load for one and a rough SM placement for the other and nothing seems to be adding up correctly.

We'd argue, sometimes cry, and wish desperately that we could just end this distance by one of us hopping on a plane and being reunited again. The most frustrating thing was that we always seemed to have conflict over the same things. And the really silly thing about it is most of those things were us wanting to plan the future but seemingly disagreeing to how it should be. I knew relationships were hard, but this hard? Don't get me wrong, I loved him just as much as I had when I boarded the plane for Asia if not more and he was just as assured of our future as he had been the first time he called me his Ishti (a Hebrew word...you can look it up if you want.) As much as we wanted to make this year be a growing experience for the both of us, I wondered if it might just be the opposite. Would we have to wait a whole other year to be able to work through the sadness that being apart had caused?

Then something happened. Our relationship began to change...and for the better.

As humans we like to put up wall or wear masks. Try to appear as put together as possible even inside we feel like we're falling apart. It's not that it's a healthy thing, we know from stories like Phantom of the Opera that masks are definitely a bad thing...if not even deadly...but we still choose to avoid vulnerability. It's so much easier to keep up a front, right?

I don't know if it was just that point in a relationship, wisdom beyond our years from God, or just how things ended up happening (I'd bet my money on the middle of the three options, by that's just my two cents), but our walls began to come down. After a particularly low moment we decided to be completely honest with one another when it came to how we felt about various situations. Now you might be thinking, Oh my! Here comes all the dirt and ill feelings from the past several months but the complete opposite was the case. You see, when we had held things inside (particularly this is true of me) those were the moments when hurtful words would form or assumptions were made based on a single comment. It was when we explained our feelings, even our doubts and fears, that suddenly more walls came down. Some of the things we had been thinking, silently and not so silently, suddenly didn't actually apply anymore. Our disagreements actually were more or less us agreeing but in different ways. Sure, there were still situations that we might prefer different outcomes but what was at our hearts in all of them were nearly always identical. No more silence, tears, or side comments. As we looked into each other's face (via video cam), the problems didn't seem so big anymore.

It should be noted that I'm not saying in a relationship every secret must be told. Are there times when silence may be best? Both me and my boyfriend would agree that sometimes there may be a need for that but i think our culture, if not humanity itself rarely pushed that line. More than not, it is honesty and true openness that people find themselves so hungry for. Perhaps problems can arise from being too open but at least in my experience they arise more from the silence of stubbornness and the fear of allowing yourself to truly be known.

You see, as we we kept ourselves in this venerable place, more "problems" arose. Our struggles and mistakes, both past and present found a voice and yet once again, instead of separating us or pushing us away, we realized our struggles we so similar. Sometimes even identical. And for me that's been currently what I see as the most beautiful parts of our relationship. As we grow closer together we've found ourselves to be so much more flawed than either may have realized before and yet because of this, we have been given the greatest gift: growing and becoming stronger together. It is as if our lives, once so seemingly different and separate from each other, has been imperfectly yet in a perfect way joined together so we don't walk alone anymore as God working in both of our lives.

Like most things I've learned since I said yes to my love last May, I'm amazed at how connected all of this is to my relationship with Christ. Over the past year, ministry has crowded so much of my mind and time that becoming distant from God actually became easier than one would imagine. Being open with Him changed into simply a list of what I needed from Him and a constant struggle with why the problems in our relationship (me and God) never seemed to change, never seemed to grow. How much I think Satan uses ministry sometimes to pull us away from Jesus. We pull away because to be vulnerable before God us just about as painful as being vulnerable in front of anyone else. We hunger and thirst after Him but just enough so that we get by enough to make it through another day. But what he wants is openness. Not because it's a mystery to Him but because it's by being honest with Him that we can acknowledge our true condition and realize the long months that we've tried to walk the Christian life alone.

For me the past few weeks in our relationship have been the most beautiful yet even as the questions sometimes remains. My dear beloved is more perfect to me than he ever was before all this began. I'm learning his heart, flaws and all, and I'm so blessed to be a part of it. Every day is one day closer to our forever, a forever I'm so glad has begun even now.

The same is true of my relationship with God as I realize just how far I've grown from knowing Him as my friend. He seems my flaws better than even I see them myself and yet somehow He can take joy in me and my "mess." I don't want to see Him anymore as my boss or motivational speaker. He's not room service to "fix" my life or a doctor that I only show up to when I actually see my need. No, I want Him to be my Beloved, my Life, and my Heart. He's my forever and it's a forever that's just beginning.

Do you want the same?

Road Blocks

Beep...Beep...Beep

When a bus randomly starts making beeping noises and starts to slow down, you can pretty much guarantee that your journey will be longer than expected. The sleeping girls began to stir as everyone looked around to try to figure out what was going on.

Beep...Beep...Beep...

Silence. The beeping has stopped! Except that's only because the bus now is turned off and is in park. Out climb the drivers and Thai is spoken around me. I have no idea what is wrong with the bus but I'm not so sure anyone else does either. As the girls look around the noise in the bus rises as everyone decides they might as well have some conversation as we sit.



I turn to my seatmate, 15 year old "Tang" and we share some shaking of our heads and laughing. We both know we might be here for a while. I turn to the clock and see it's getting close to supper time and I turn back to Tang and ask her in my best Thai if she's hungry. Mai pen rai (I'm fine) she responds but within a few minutes some of the other girls start grabbing snacks from the back of the van and we begin munching on spicy chip sticks.

Time began to stretch and given my limited Thai and her limited English, there wasn't a ton to talk about after we'd already spent nearly 20 hours sitting together the past few days. My mind began to wander to the past week...

No one tells you before you arrive at a location just how hard it will be. You never know the problems or the struggle it will be until after you arrive. What's even more difficult is figuring out what is behind the problems while navigating the language barrier. For me when I arrived in Thailand, several things didn't add up, but no one seemed to explain any of it to me. The original job description that I had in my mind seemed completely off and I felt totally useless because what I was doing could just as easily be done by a Thai speaking person (a reason I've always been hesitant to SM was to go to a location where locals should be filling the job instead of enabling through foreign missions) so you can imagine the conflict raging in my heart at that point. Giving up and going home was a constant thought. I was hurting people back home by being gone so why would I stick it out here if I actually wasn't able to do anything that was truly needed?



A conversation with one of the oldest girls changed those thoughts for me. Randomly, she started telling me how different the shelter was a few years back when the staff was Christian. Currently, all of the staff but one are Buddhist, and the spiritual elements of the shelter (such as worships, Pathfinders, AY, and other fun activities) all but vanished when the new staff arrived. What she said next shocked me. You must understand, this is a teenager who you can tell thinks she's 100% an adult and doesn't need guidance. She told me that she missed these things. That she wished they would do them again, but she didn't see how that would ever happen. You can imagine my heart as I heard these things, for I have been praying to be able to do these exact activities. Suddenly, the lack of encouragement and support in adding to the girls' "busy" schedules made sense, and my feelings of being all alone in my mission finally added up. But what am I to do? Hours of conversation are needed with those overseeing the project from the head office to find solutions and then there is the wisdom and patience to find creative ways to add Christ to the shelter again, even though some in authority may oppose it. Was there anything I could do? Or was it all just hopeless waiting for a different reality than what I was waking up daily to?



Suddenly, an idea popped into my head as my mind traveled back to the present, yet I hesitated for a second. Maybe now wasn't the time and maybe I couldn't communicate the idea correctly. I shook my head. "Why not try?", I told myself as I turned to Tang. "Do you and me, khun and chan, want to pray for the bus to go, bpai, mai?" I folded my hands in hopes that it would help her understand. For a second, Tang just looked puzzled. Then, however, a light flashed in her eyes as she quickly nodded. Then we were there praying, her in Thai and me in English. Neither of us understood exactly what the other was saying except that we both knew we were praying for the same thing. I may have said amen, but in my head I kept praying. "Please Lord, please answer her prayers! You don't have to do this for me, I know you'll answer this prayer eventually but please God, answer it now for Tang's sake. For each of these girl's sake".  I've never felt so nervous after saying a prayer. I've never felt so in need for God to give an answer so quickly.

From down below, we heard the bus driver close the bus's engine door and climb back in. No one else probably had a second thought (this was his fourth or fifth time to believe it was fixed only to have the bus beep and stop working again. I, on the other hand, could feel my heart race. As he sat down I sent another prayer heavenwards and tried to breath deeply. I wondered to myself, Why does this matter so much to you?

The driver turned the key, and the bus started. No beeping noise yet but that didn't mean it wouldn't start within a few minutes. We waited as the bus started moving but this time instead of slowing down within 30 seconds, the bus driver kept on driving. The noise didn't return and hours later we arrived back at the shelter without any more mechanical problems. As I turned to Tang, I wondered if she realized what had just happened: the small prayer that had been answered but to me in such a big way.



You see, in addition to feeling as though I was making no spiritual difference in the girls lives, I had also questioned God a few weeks before as my grandfather lay dying. At that moment in time, I couldn't think of a single prayer that had been answered for me. The lists I make of people whose hearts I pray become open to God never seem to change from their agnosticism. Those sick never seem to be healed except for the ending of pain in death. The problems I pray about in my own life seem to circle around more than exit the round-about of my prayers. "Do you actually answer any of my prayers?", this very homesick and lonely missionary had asked.

Just like many prayers we have, God's answer may have taken longer than I had wished in the moment. Yet, His answer to the question on my heart was answered in a way that others could be a witness to what He was doing. I think of all the prayers I've offered about my situation here and all the tears shed when I feel everything is hopeless. Does God hear and know them? Of course He does and not only that but He is waiting to answer our prayers yet so often in the moment we give in to hopelessness or even worse, when He does answer our prayers, we don't even notice the miracles He showers upon us because we're so focused on the negative. Are we willing to stop, to look at everything to try to see His blessings He pours out on us, and use even the smallest of these opportunities to fulfill the calling He's placed on our lives?

Change

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a Student Missionary? Then close your eyes and imagine the following…

You’re sitting in a small and somewhat dingy government building to get the work visa you need to stay in the country you arrive in a few weeks ago. The warmth of the room makes you long to get back to Chiang Rai in the north where every room has an open window letting the air cool the stuffy rooms. In the morning you’re supposed to head to Chiang Rai, and you’re definitely ready to see the girls at the shelter again since you had to spend your birthday away from their smiling faces.  But hold on…what’s this about the work visa not being done? Didn’t the information get turned in when it were supposed to or was there lack of communication? So you stay in the hot and sticky city an extra day and have to wait another 24 hours before you can sleep in your “own” bed.

Just a normal day…here’s another:

You’re wringing the last bit of water out of your hair as you walk to find a broom to sweep your room. It feels so good to be clean again after a long day of sweating and traveling, and your apartment needs swept before Sabbath. Before you make it to the booms, a mob of laughing girls come and surround you as they welcome you home. Now off to your room and...Oh wait, change of plans. Stay in the dress you’re currently wearing for vespers in just a few hours, and come supervise/help the girls move a pile of dirt at a building project of the church’s with buckets and shovels. You’ll sweat a whole lot and need to take another shower before supper but at least there’s productive work, right?

It doesn’t stop there, though.

You’ve been told before you arrived that you’ll be teaching English to the girls but in addition to that you’re needed to teach music, acting, and just about anything else. You’re also needed to add more of a spiritual presence in the shelter, someone tells you but that doesn’t make a ton of sense just yet. Then you arrive and learn that the teaching of English is the most important thing to do, and if that’s all you get to, that’d be fine in the eyes of the staff. The girls are extremely busy with school, and free time to add in any other extracurricular activity seems impossible. As for God, isn’t church and Sabbath activities enough? You don’t need to add anything because the girls just “don’t have time.”

In reading this post you can probably guess where I’m going…Missionary life is always subject to change so be prepared for the unexpected…but actually…no. That’s not what has been on my heart. You see, being flexible with plans can be an easy thing in some regard. We may become irritated but you can simply learn to live life with an attitude of going with whatever happens. Even changes in dreams can be a thing to accept if you tell yourself enough that this must be God’s plan for you.

But what about when you’re the one changing? Either you seem to be changing too fast or you don’t seem to be changing at all. With each of the other “versions” of change, everything is external even if it may affect us internally. We see it happening and can simply adjust. But internal change is different. Many times we let a thought grow or let a word someone says to us impact us, and pretty soon we find we think differently than we did before. We leave frustrations in our heads, telling ourselves it doesn’t really matter, but the next time something happens to bring the frustration up, instead of remaining silent our thoughts bare their heads in ugly words.

On the flip side, we tell ourselves we just need to be a certain way and everything will be better but for once the words we tell ourselves just don’t seem to affect our hearts and behavior. We might even try adjusting our behavior, thinking surly this will change us, but instead when we look at ourselves we see that nothing seems to have really changed in our hearts and minds. Or what about the times when you know so deeply in your mind that something is one way and yet no matter how much head knowledge you have, your heart seems to always tell you contrary. For good or bad, it seems we change when we don’t wish to change and can’t change when we wish we could. Yet even deeper than each of these things is changing the way we look at ourselves or working against our insecurities. We wonder if these struggles will ever become something we’ll just know as the pain of an old memory and not a scab that reopens when it is touched just right.

This morning as I talked with my boyfriend, I mentioned some of my current frustrations with change. He posed a question to me that made me think and still makes me think even now. “If nothing does change,” he asked, “would you be okay with that?” What if my goals for being here in Thailand aren’t fulfilled to my satisfaction because my internal struggle with perfection doesn’t see the current situation as a success? What if the place where I want to get to in my relationship with God isn’t met within this year? What if I can’t stay positive in every situation and what if the things I struggle with at the beginning of the year happen to be the same struggles at the end? What if I still doubt myself as much as I do right now? What if my heart and my head still don’t align as they should?

The truth is, I don’t know if I would be okay with it…In my mind change needs to happen, and it needs to happen now! I don’t think I’m the only one who has ever thought that way. Over the past week and a half, I’ve read through more Psalms in that amount of time than ever before, going from the first to seventy-eighth, which I am currently reading and journaling through. A common theme that David and the other psalmists keep repeating is a need for change. David wants a new and clean heart in Psalm fifty-one but three psalms later he needs saving from strangers seeking to kill him. In the next psalm though, he is asking for deliverance from a friend that has turned into an enemy. Multiple times he asks God to change the words of his mouths and the thoughts of his heart. Even his sins, he feels, is impossible to change in Psalm thirty-eight even though that is exactly what he’s calling out for God to do. It makes you wonder if there was any change in David’s life since his complaints and requests to God don’t seem to change much in the first eighty chapters?

Considering that he keeps crying out to God, one has to assume there’s some sort of change 

happening or else why would he keep seeking God? Psalm 57:7 says “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast.” In journaling I wrote besides this verse that David isn’t about to change who he puts his trust in even when things change as he wishes they would not or nothing changes when that’s all he wants. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, change is happening but in a “time zone” different from his own. He keeps his focus where it needs to be and trusts that God will do the rest. After all, what lasting change can David do that he knows will actually work out in the end? Within the Psalms David does mention time and time again when he has been changed or his situation was changed by God. It happens, even if it’s only in later years that David can look back and see the change that has happened in his life.

I don’t know why things in my life do not always change as I wish or why struggles remain the same. I don’t have answers for you and your own questions about change. All I know is to encourage you to keep calling out to Him. Even when you wonder why your requests seem to be on repeat, keep looking for change but trust Him in the moment when that seems impossible. Maybe the change we’ve been looking for isn’t quite what we think it should look like and yet it’s still there if we look hard enough. Let everything around you twist, turn, and change but let one thing remain the same.

Remain steadfast, my friends, and I’ll do my best to do the same.

First Impressions

Exactly a week has passed since my feet touched down on a new and very different continent: Asia! The past seven days seem more like a month to me and I’ve come to compile a list of things I didn’t expect in Thailand when I first arrived. Take a moment to read this list so you’ll be sure to be prepared for this country when/if you are able to visit.

1. It’s not that hot. Okay, so yes it certainly is hot but having lived in Georgia and South Carolina all my life, the weather in August is pretty similar to our own temperatures for that month. I don’t know if my body has already adjusted to the weather but having a fan on me constantly as I work makes me feel slightly chilled. Having the windows open to let in the breeze (a reminder of the South Carolinian breezes) keeps rooms cool enough during most days and making sure you’re wearing cool clothing helps on the very hot days. 
2. Being the minority isn’t as crazy as it is in other countries. Having traveled to Haiti and Egypt where having lighter skin makes you stand out and catch the eye of every native, being of non-Asian descent made me think that attention would always be drawn to me as it had been in those other countries but so far that doesn’t really seem to be the case. Chiang Mai, the city where I flew in to, has so many tourists and expats that nearly every race is pretty common to see. Now that I’m in Chiang Rai, going to the market does create many more glances but children don’t stare and traffic doesn’t stop (of which I am ever so thankful!) 
3. American Thai food is pretty accurate. It goes without saying that the food here (Thai food, in case someone thought that Thai food they get in restaurants is just a specialty) is pretty yummy (I haven’t had a meal that I didn’t like although some things have been very different, such as mushroom and lemon grass soup.) What has surprised me is that the Thai food I ate or even cooked while still in America is close enough for me not to notice a huge difference. I’m sure it’s possible that once I’ve lived here for eight months and head back home, I may hold up my nose at stateside Thai food but we’ll just have to see!
4. The Thai language is hard…really hard. Maybe this wasn’t a surprise but just a confirmation. Because Thai is a tonal language, one word can literally mean 5 things based on where you place the word. Add to it that I’m not really good at memorizing random sounds that have no meaning attached yet for me and you have one very lost farang (person of European decent.) The whole “you’ll start understanding another language in 6 weeks” seems pretty impossible at the moment but I guess stranger things have happened.
5. I’m emotionally scarred for life by witnessing fresh, live fish chopped up at the market. Okay, so I kid but it truly made my stomach feel strange witnessing this normal, everyday event. Actually to be honest, I didn’t watch exactly (averted my eyes, you know) but the sound was enough. The fish were spread out on a table, gasping for air, while others swam in a large bowl, enjoying what would be their final minutes if not seconds of life. A customer would walk by, select his fish, the butcher would set the fish ever so nicely on a round board, and then WHAM…bye bye little fishy…
6. Thailand is wonderful but it’s not home. Somewhere in some SM class I heard it said for the first few weeks of being at your new location, you’ll be in a sort of honeymoon phase and you’re feeling great. Yeah, that’s not true in the slightest (at least for me.) I haven’t gone a single day without waking up feeling anxious and missing my family and friends terribly…and to be more specific, my boyfriend. The days seem to drag on and I feel as though the next eight months will be a never ending journey that will lead me farther and farther away from the life I know. I’m not going to lie, distance is hard, especially on a relationship and knowing you’re the “cause” of the heartache doesn’t help much either. But praise God for the girls. They truly are the brightest spot in my day. When they come home at 5:30pm and I get to work on English with them as they help me with my Thai, sing and play songs in the little music room besides the kitchen, and just watch them interact with each other, it gives me the ounce of courage I need to keep getting up every morning. 

There are still so many things to tell you, so many things I wish each of you could see and lessons I’ve learned that I wish to share with you but I’ll end it for now. Hopefully this whets your appetite for the Land of Smiles and you’ll continue to join me on this adventure. 
Until next time, Sa-wai-dee, ka!