Is this experience anything like what you were thinking it would be?
My dad asked this question of me in response to the Q&A session. When I was writing the answer, however, I realized that I wanted to explore my thoughts on it in a bit more depth than the two- or three-paragraph responses I gave the other answers. Thus, it receives its own blog post.
The answer is: yes and no.
Truth be told, I did my best to walk in without expectations and have not thought much about how it compares to those I failed to quell.
When reflecting on this mission I cannot help but compare it to my other experience living in a third-world country, which was my “month” in Guatemala. There are a lot of differences between the two, culture and geography aside, simply by virtue of my purpose and method of getting here. In Guatemala I traveled by myself, lived with a host, went to Spanish school, and volunteered only half the day in more-or-less secular locations. Here, on the other hand, I’m with a team of ten other people, live with them in a team house, and our very-God-oriented ministry takes the whole day.
I think this looks very different from what other people expected when I told them about it. Often people would comment on how much I would mature as a person. However, my personal growth has been less of improving myself, and more of maturing my faith, learning more about God, letting Him teach me lessons, and understanding what gifts I have to serve Him and His with.
In some capacity, I did expect to learn about myself, about the world, about God in those ways. But I didn’t know what that would look like, and I was surprised at just what God taught me about those things.
The biggest subversion of my expectations has been the healing brought to me.
After a series of long, exhausting days with little rest time, I have found myself slipping into a depressed mood in the past. Even with the knowledge that the irrelevance and hopelessness I feel is a lie from the Enemy, it puts a damper on me for as long as a week. It happened twice this summer. However, after a few unbroken, tiring days this time, I felt completely fine.
Sharing my testimony with the team and them responding with words from God and prayer healed me more than four other years of recovery combined.
When I thought God would probably perform some miraculous healing on this trip, I had no idea that one of the miracles would be me. I did not expect God to work on me just as much as he has been working through me.
“And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” 2 Corinthians 3:18
However, healing me and continuing to proffer these incredible blessings of knowledge and joy upon me is also a test. Pretty early on He explained why He called me to a mission by showing me how I’d come to idolize His gifts rather than He who gave them.
In theory, I would best learn to love Him by having those blessings revoked and withheld for a while. Yet here He is, continually pouring into me regardless of my previous mishandling of and weakness with His giving.
He will never ever withhold Himself from me, even to teach me a necessary lesson. So of course I have to live up to that! I can lean on His perfection instead of my own efforts and honor His amazing love for me as best I can. If He will never forsake me even in the slightest, then I will strive to do the same for Him.
“He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.” 2 Peter 1:4-7
