Wednesday, October 6, 2010
One Month Update
A little more than one month. It feels like an eternity that I've been back. The update letters still haven't been sent, most of the gifts so carefully chosen still sit in my room, and here I am.
I am so convinced that this fog must be a natural thing when someone leaves the place where they feel they make the most difference, where they feel like they are needed, and yet still in awe of how little they are and how really they can do nothing except what God allows, and what He planned for them to do. I have struggled with disillusionment. I have to be honest the road back to reality of where I am in life hasn't been easy. I apologize to those that follow my story and are waiting to hear about how great my time in China was. I promise you WILL hear about it, but this is a facet of ministry that I think is equally important to deal with.
I arrived back home to the beginning of a FULL school year ahead of me, and questions. My last two weeks in China were certainly the most powerful of the entire time I had spent there. That only made it harder for me to leave. I connected with other people like me who truly cared, witnessed the miracles of God's mercy, and understood compassionate love on a whole new level. Was not that what I was created for? If it was, why do I feel so completely useless here? The single biggest thing I have struggled with coming back here, was that I feel like I have lost my voice. In China, it was easy to talk with others who, like me, had a passion to see the lost get found and set free. Here, it feels more like I'm standing next to a roaring waterfall trying to shout, but as loud as I try to be, the people around me can't hear, or choose not to listen. It's not to say that I don't believe there are others out there who desperately want to be heard. People who care so much about something that it becomes the single most frustrating part of every day to watch everyone around them pass right by without hearing, or worse; nod their head like they agree, and then watch them walk away.
I've learned that quite honestly, it's a whole heck of a lot harder to believe in the power of God in America when everything in the "Christian" society I've grown up in my whole life has turned out to be basically nothing but a bunch of plastic smiles and people who have been so brainwashed by the American IDEA of what "CHURCH" is that they cannot make themselves CARE. I feel sad for them! Truly I pity everything they're missing, but sometimes it is really hard to feel compassionate towards them. How do you save the people who think they are already saved? The single hardest group of individuals to communicate the desires of God's heart for the world with are those that have money to paste over their eyes so that they cannot see, and their ears so they cannot hear. Those who are in more need than any others are those who refuse to believe they have a need they cannot meet themselves. My prayer is that God would use me to help open their eyes, and give me just one person who understands and will join me in shouting beside the waterfall until somebody hears.
I am so convinced that this fog must be a natural thing when someone leaves the place where they feel they make the most difference, where they feel like they are needed, and yet still in awe of how little they are and how really they can do nothing except what God allows, and what He planned for them to do. I have struggled with disillusionment. I have to be honest the road back to reality of where I am in life hasn't been easy. I apologize to those that follow my story and are waiting to hear about how great my time in China was. I promise you WILL hear about it, but this is a facet of ministry that I think is equally important to deal with.
I arrived back home to the beginning of a FULL school year ahead of me, and questions. My last two weeks in China were certainly the most powerful of the entire time I had spent there. That only made it harder for me to leave. I connected with other people like me who truly cared, witnessed the miracles of God's mercy, and understood compassionate love on a whole new level. Was not that what I was created for? If it was, why do I feel so completely useless here? The single biggest thing I have struggled with coming back here, was that I feel like I have lost my voice. In China, it was easy to talk with others who, like me, had a passion to see the lost get found and set free. Here, it feels more like I'm standing next to a roaring waterfall trying to shout, but as loud as I try to be, the people around me can't hear, or choose not to listen. It's not to say that I don't believe there are others out there who desperately want to be heard. People who care so much about something that it becomes the single most frustrating part of every day to watch everyone around them pass right by without hearing, or worse; nod their head like they agree, and then watch them walk away.
I've learned that quite honestly, it's a whole heck of a lot harder to believe in the power of God in America when everything in the "Christian" society I've grown up in my whole life has turned out to be basically nothing but a bunch of plastic smiles and people who have been so brainwashed by the American IDEA of what "CHURCH" is that they cannot make themselves CARE. I feel sad for them! Truly I pity everything they're missing, but sometimes it is really hard to feel compassionate towards them. How do you save the people who think they are already saved? The single hardest group of individuals to communicate the desires of God's heart for the world with are those that have money to paste over their eyes so that they cannot see, and their ears so they cannot hear. Those who are in more need than any others are those who refuse to believe they have a need they cannot meet themselves. My prayer is that God would use me to help open their eyes, and give me just one person who understands and will join me in shouting beside the waterfall until somebody hears.
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