Love isn't always painless but it is always worth it. "In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.” Jn13:35 Love takes you to unexpected places, countries, cultures ... and you meet unexpected people with unexpected stories. Sometimes love, it calls you to hold babies with dirty faces, mothers longing for stability, and young girls who's eyes don't shine any more. Love calls and carries you threw times when you cry with women who have been brutally raped and forced into slavery. And it calls us to sit in the dust with little boys with scraped knees and rocks in their little hands to defend themselves or to stand on dark street corners on dark nights drinking coffee with young men in heals.Love calls you to invest your time in the people you love, your children, homes, and church..... There are times we are called to be still and allow ourselves to embrace and let the pain and reality mold and heal us into who we are called to be. And more often then not the latter is harder for me to accept. This week a young girl ask me " Kendie how do you deal with the things you see and hear while you are in ministry? What do you do when words don't stop ringing in your ears?There are words that don't stop ringing in my ears." I understood. I smiled and thought about how often I have asked myself this question and memories of sleepless nights,voices,and eyes with no emotion they all hit me in that moment. And I thought how ironic it was that she asked me, because this last month this very question is one of the ones I have been seeking answers for myself... And it always comes back to embracing God with all your heart. '' How do we deal with the fact that suffering is unavoidable in our calling, and even chosen, that we willingly walk into the dark, into the face of unimaginable things because of love?'' - Sarita Hartz Istanbul is on my heart. I see faces of people who told me stories of their time spent in Istanbul. Like many cities it has hidden stories and dark secrets we seldom hear about, but I saw it on their faces and I heard it in their stories. Stories told on the other side of the world. I sat by the Aegean sea with a young girl and was told a story. A story about a girl she had seen come back from working as an escort in Istanbul. She told me about how the girl in the story sobbed and about the look on her face. What she thought would be a night spent with one man was instead spent with twenty men who raped her. Her life shattered, her body bruised.... The girl telling me the story was a few years younger then I am and her story was also heartbreaking. We let wave after wave splash up onto our feet as my friend told me the story, the view of turkey just across the Aegean sea. And I wondered how many other stories were never told? How many people have taken the time to listen? How many people see what is hidden in plain sight? There is so much hidden in plain sight. There are so many people screaming to a deaf world. I had a nightmare while I was in Greece. I was being forced to work as a sex slave. I couldn't stop it. I didn't have a voice. I couldn't get anyone's attention and no one answered my phone calls. I felt like I was trapped behind a glass and people would walk right by me on the street but I was hidden in plain sight. I had never felt so invisible or cheap in my life. My body would be sold for only a few euros. In my dream I was looking into my own eyes..my eyes didn't shine anymore. My eyes were full of pain and fear. I woke up. But the reality of my dream is that there are so many girls out there who do not wake up from this living nightmare. There are girls today, right now being forced to sell their bodies for less then the price of a pita. Who will go to them? Who will hear their silent cries? Who will walk with them through their pain, healing and restoration? " He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot. " I could not cry if I did not love, and it is those bonds forged in adversity and despair, those bonds tightened through sitting with someone in their pain and allowing it, which grants me greater access to God’s unfathomable compassion. I feel His heartbreak, therefore I know His heart. I bring mine before him, and therefore He knows me more intimately. I am grateful for pain because it teaches me I still have the capacity to love, to have a heart that is tender and penetrable. This is the missionaries’ journey to allow oneself to be broken open again and again..Understand just because you do good and are serving God does not mean you are guaranteed protection from pain. This is a great lie that will gut you. That’s just not Jesus’ message. He entered into pain willingly to save us. He entered into the pain of others. We live in a fallen world and we have an enemy who wants to destroy us, who would use our pain to label us a “victim.”...But we will not let him. '' - Sarita Hartz What we believe to be a fact is often what we struggle to accept. Honestly, the last month and a half I have struggled with feeling like I failed my mission. I was too weak,... I failed. My heart felt broken into a thousand pieces and I thought that I would never get it all back together. And the words that so often were spoken to me and also spoken from my mouth kept coming back to me " Remember to take care of yourself Kendie" Self care echoed in my mind until the other night I finally fell apart, I stayed up late and I let myself be okay with hurting, I couldn't stop the tears, and my heart was screaming at God,... I was angry because I hate pain and I've seen and felt so much pain. And my heart longed to know "What did I do wrong? I questioned God's goodness. I doubted..... Deep inside I felt like this breaking, this loss was my fault. I questioned if my life had purpose anymore. That's when I felt my own heart beating and God whispered "put your hand on your chest and feel your heart beat." Every pulse proves that there is still purpose. Seasons change. Loss and gain happen. My heart keeps beating and with every pulse I experience love, new beginnings, grace, healing, growth... each pulse tells me that I am loved by the one who breaths life into me. Loved by the one who gave up his own heart beat so that each of mine would beat with a purpose. With each heartbeat on the cross He shed more blood for me. He gave his life for me. He won the battle for me not because He needed me but because He wanted me. Then He whispered " Kendie, let yourself be taken care of.".. And that changed everything. It is His battle, not mine. I believed that, but somehow I hadn't embraced it. No this does not mean I will now step back and do nothing, it means I can move forward believing that no matter what happens we have overcome. Sacrifice, death, resurrection. '' What if transformation wasn’t about God making me more perfect so He could love me more, but instead was about changing me so I could experience His love more perfectly? ... He finds us completely worthy just because we are —because He made us. God doesn’t love us any less because we’re broken. In fact, the care and time He takes to restore our lives is just another way He shows how much He loves us... His desire is for us to have more of what is most important—more peace, more joy, more love.'' - Ann Voskamp. Burnout is real but it's not a destination. Don't let the feeling of failure and doubt stop you from finishing that which you are called to do. Pausing or changing the course doesn't define failure. Sometimes the course of our futures change and in those moments it's hard to see the big picture, it's hard to adapt to a new environment... Just because everything has changed doesn't mean you aren't moving forward. You would be surprised if you knew what God is doing through you and the circumstances. Be faithful. You have not failed.. you've been called into a part of the battle that needs you. Allow yourself to be taken care of. He cares for you and every detail of your life. Sometimes our greatest accomplishments come in times of being still and knowing that He is God. Resting in what we know is truth. - 31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. 35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 36 (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”[a]) 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. 38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[b] neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8:31-39 Don't run from pain, embrace it. Don't let the pain and darkness of the world we live in today harden your heart, embrace the pain, press into the pain for it is there that you will find God. He too feels the pain. He knew how much it was going to hurt, and He took it upon Himself on the cross. The cross was a server mercy. Severe Mercy meaning : "A blessing of great degree, requiring great effort, that is an act of divine compassion."
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