Roller Coaster

I have been flooded with so many emotions the past couple days.  It's really pretty ridiculous.  

Sunday - Utterly overwhelmed with joy and thankfulness and awe.  I was driving down the road, completely alone, absolutely beaming.  I had this epiphany of how great God's love is, and how faithful He is.  Throughout the past couple years, I've been submerged in some really dark days.  I've been totally without hope, seeing no reason at all to continue living.  But God refused to let me go.  I could go on for quite a while getting into specifics of how He saved me (physically, that is) so many times in so many ways.  But I won't do that right now.  Just trust me; He did save me from death.

Monday - Defeated, annoyed, and inadequate.  I got back to campus after a 10-hour drive super late on Sunday, so I didn't get that much sleep that night.  So on Monday night, I went to bed at like 7:30 p.m, in hopes that I could recover from my exhaustion before today.  Well, I lay in bed for about 45 minutes with no sleep anywhere in sight.  It was really hot in my room, and I was miserable.  So I got out a book for class and began reading.  I read two chapters and decided to try to sleep again.  Then two of my roommates came in and started talking.  Loudly.  I had headphones in my ears with my iPod playing to drown out the noise, but I could hear them over it.  I tried to ignore it and go to sleep, but I couldn't.  So I finally asked them to try and be a little quieter.  They said they would, then proceeded to talk at the exact same level as before.  At this point, I was literally about to cry from frustration and exhaustion.  I climbed down from my bunk, grabbed my notebook and pen, and went to sit in the stairwell and write down my thoughts to God.  It was really more of me just yelling at Him on paper.  I don't get it, I fumed.  You've called me to this ridiculous, unattainable level of holiness- this way of life that I simply cannot live! Why would You call me to what I cannot do?  I keep screwing up, and it's not going to stop.  I vented to Him about this and various other thoughts in my mind, then eventually went back to bed and managed to fall asleep.

Tuesday - I've got so many emotions rolling around that I can't even begin to explain them all.

I'm telling you.  My mind and emotions are a roller coaster right now.  It's so frustrating.  I'll stop now, though, because I'm sure you won't want to continue listening to me babble on about all this.  I just wanted to write it all down in a blog, since I'm unable to do so in a poem (my preferred outlet.)  I do, however, want to insert this poem of mine from a couple years ago that I stumbled upon today.  I feel like it pretty perfectly describes my current dilemma with ineffability.  Here it is:


Sometimes,
My heart spills out poems,
Not written with a pen.
Poems that no one but God can read.
Not even me.

Sometimes,
These poems are emotions.
Flashing anger, glinting in the eye, a bolt of fire.
Peace, lulling my soul, which gives out a contented sigh.
Joy, dancing and laughing a laugh
That comes deep, deep from the bottom of the belly.

Sometimes,
My heart crafts poems that turn out to be pictures.
Pictures of driving down some straight, sunny road,
Windows down, music up.
Pictures of going away in the quiet, cool darkness,
To some far away midnight dream.
Pictures of nothing at all.

Sometimes,
My poems are tastes.
Bitter. Like coffee too strong, blacker than onyx.
Sweet. A favorite dessert, a sleepy sunrise.
Salty. Right on top of a fresh cut. Burning, burning.
Sour. Faces puckered, silly laughs.


Sometimes,
They're textures.
Rough. A wagon ride on a trail calloused by time.
Or crunchy, like the first bite of an apple,
Like the bite of the wind on a shivery fall day.

Sometimes,
They pour out like milk from a pitcher.
Smooth and steady.

These poems of mine,
They stay always in my mind and in my heart,
Whirring around, bumping into each other,
Moving slow and fast,
Down then up.

I cannot capture them with a pen or a net.
But they are poems.
My poems.
Written for me, and for God.

Unreached People Group LTE

Here at the Honor Academy, we have several events throughout the year called "Life Transforming Events", or LTE's for short. Our most recent LTE was the Unreached People Group LTE. Basically, all of us interns were divided into groups of about 5 to 10 people, and each group made up either a "tribe" or a missionary group. Each tribe had its own unique culture and religion, and none of them had been exposed to the Gospel at all. Each missionary group had one tribe that they had to minister/preach the Gospel to. Of course, it was all role-play; in reality, we were all Christians. The experience still impacted me tremendously, though, so I thought I'd share with you what I learned from it. :)

[FYI - I was in a missionary group, not a tribe.]

The Unreached People Group LTE was one of my favorite LTE’s so far this year. The experience was different than I expected it to be in a lot of ways; the whole thing affected me mentally and emotionally much more than I anticipated it would. I learned much about the importance of missionaries relating directly to the people and their beliefs, and the tribe people’s hearts pricked my own and reminded me of why I love missions so much.

One of the central lessons that I learned from UPG is that in order to effectively preach the Gospel to any people group, the missionaries must take into consideration the people’s culture and beliefs. We cannot use the same method to witness to Hindus as Muslims, or Muslims as atheists, or atheists as animists. We must speak in terms to which the people can relate. Our tribe, the Nhangs, worshipped a god named Mooshoo, who was supposedly loving, just like our own God. That was the trouble; Mooshoo was very similar to the true God, so it was difficult to explain why our God is better. We eventually picked up on several key differences, though. Mooshoo only ever “spoke” to Mau, their tribal chief. I was able to point out the beautiful truth that Yahweh, our God, speaks to all believers, male and female alike. Any god who chooses favorites cannot truly be loving. The Nhangs also held a key belief that Mooshoo held them in his hands and protected them, as long as they consistently prayed to him. “Mooshoo handinka Nhang,” Mau explained to us. We used this belief of theirs to explain that Yahweh holds us in His hands always, even if we don’t pray for a while.

In order to convey just how deeply my heart was impacted by this mock missions experience, I must explain some of my emotions from the past several months. Since I arrived here at the Honor Academy in Garden Valley, Texas, I have learned to appreciate Scottsboro, Alabama more than I ever thought that I would. I miss my home, my family, my friends, my church, my dog, my town, and my state as a whole. I can relate so directly to the lyrics of “Sweet Home Alabama.” So many days and nights here, I have wanted nothing more than to be back at home. This desire replaced an old one that I had, a desire to pack my bags and leave as soon as possible, to live forever in some faraway land, preaching the Gospel and loving the people. It’s true that I could just change my plans to be a missionary and choose to live at home in Alabama for the rest of my life, but there’s one problem with that decision. I am called to a career in foreign missions; to choose anything else would be direct disobedience of God and His will for my life. Because of that, I was extremely upset and confused that God had “allowed” for my desire for missions to be taken from me. “Why would He call me to something that I’d detest?” I wondered. I cried out to God over my confusion again and again, and He answered.

On Saturday, early in the afternoon, our tribe turned away from Mooshoo and turned to Yahweh. After many long discussions about each deity, they realized that ours was the only true God, the only Savior. Mau prayed first, and his prayer brought me deep joy. He shouted with all his might, “YAHWEH, HANDINKA NHANG?” I realize that the entire weekend was fake, but his prayer brought tears to my eyes. It was unconventional, but it was so very sincere.

The Unreached People Group LTE taught me and touched me more than I ever thought that it would. In His unfailing faithfulness, God spoke to me through that weekend, and I once again have my desire to reach the nations, even at the cost of leaving my beloved home. UPG was just what I needed; it truly was Life Transforming Event.

[Disclaimer: During our ministry, we used the name "Yahweh" instead of simply saying God, because if we said "God", our tribe assumed we were talking about their god, Mooshoo.   We needed to personalize our Savior.]