It's been a long time coming

Where to even begin, where has this year gone, and how have I only wrote two post this year? All I can say is that life has been happening, reflection, learning, and new things have all been brought with this year. So I apologize for the lack of post and my absence, however I will say it was nice to be away from it all. It has given me time to think before I speak (or write in this case) and to truly think about what I want to pursue, what God wants of me, and what that actually looks like. So to recap on it all to bring you all up to date....

So back in May we ended up leaving Thailand due to our visas being up, and the fact that we hadn't really seen our families in about two years. So with many tears and this feeling of a sad yet certain divine intervention, we got on that plane home.

How amazing was it to see family, to be around the ones that love you unconditionally. Personally I had missed out on many huge events in my family's lives. My sisters wedding, her whole pregnancy, the birth of her first child. I missed being around my precious grandparents, the love of my aunts and cousins, and my gorgeous Indian momma and strong papa. I absolutely love my family and to be around them was something that I had missed being in Thailand.

Since I've been back it's like my heart though is still left in Thailand. Although I'm around all the ones I love and all the things that feel like home, my home just seems to be some place else. But then I began to think about whether or not it's actually that my home is someplace else or if it's just the type of lifestyle that I feel the most home with. I loved the way of living in Thailand. So simple, so easy. Something that I came to value among anything else. At this point in my life you couldn't tempt me with any amount of luxury or over the top lifestyle, my heart truly lives wholly in a no air condition room, in a hammock, and walking to the market kinda way. So having this knowledge about now what I truly value, made me begin to think. What is this whole living concept all about? How can I wholefully live this life? And more importantly can I give this whole-full living to others?

My past has always been centered around teaching. I mean that's what I got my Bachelors in, that's what I did in Thailand, it's always the thing that has been a constant theme in my life. However I am constantly being brought back to what am I really teaching people? What do I want to teach people? And after living in Thailand and seeing other parts of the world I can say with a shred of confidence that I want to teach people this wholelistic lifestyle.
How to live simply. How to value time instead of possessions. How the body lives wholly when we put food from the earth in it. How the earth can actually heal our bodies, instead of over the counter prescriptions. How to quiet our minds long enough for their Maker to then speak to us.

And to me the next step was to live out what I was thinking. But the constant questions I was having was, How do I learn to heal myself from this stress induced environment I just walked back into? How do I bring healing or this whole living to so many around the world? So I decided to bunker down in the States and get some more formal training. Which is why I am two months into a Massage and natural healing school in Asheville. I am so in love with this decision. I have learned so much so far. I can't even believe where I have come in these past three months. I am learning what heals, what helps people slow down, how you can achieve that whole living. My mind is blown at how everything is piecing together for all those questions I was asking earlier in the year.

To just top it off I'll tell you about this situation that happened when I was working at the coffee shop that I work at before I go to school at nights. Where I was reminded of all the divine qualities that have been in this journey this year. This man stopped me as I was cleaning tables and said he wanted to share something with me. I was really taken off guard, I thought at first he was gonna ask a coffee question, like can I have more sugar or where is the cream? But he looked at me and said I don't normally do this kinda thing, but my God, Jesus, wants you to know something. He said, He wants you to know that you are doing exactly what you need to do. You are exactly where you need to be. Your heart to heal and fight for people that need healing is so right. There will be a time very soon where you will walk into a place and people will think you are a god for the amount of healing you will bring to them.
My mouth dropped completely wide open. My eyes began to fill with tears, this man was sitting here telling me about specific things about what I did in Thailand, and what I want to do. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. And the whole time I was thinking, don't cry don't cry, it's your new job, don't cry. But I will say, that man blessed me that day. I will never forget his boldness to speak God's promises.

Since we've been back in the States, life has just been filled with promises. Dreams and the idea of bringing wholeness and healing to people's lives has continued to pour on me. And the funny part about it all,  is this quest of finding wholeness to teach to others has brought about this sense of wholeness in myself. I am being wholefuly healed everyday.

I will be in school till February and beyond that I have not the slightest clue as to what's next. But what I do know is that my heart beats so rapidly when I get to live simply, when my time and efforts are surrounded around people instead of items. When I can heal someone with my hands on the table, bringing relief from this caged world we live in. To quiet my mind long enough on my yoga mat so that I can begin to hear my Makers voice. To walk with Him in the mornings and to begin to speak out my dreams of bringing whole living to others in this world who need it. For now that's all I know, and that is enough.

Love you guys so much!! Don't be afraid to fuel the fire, make it burn bright with your passions, and then dance around it beautifully and without shame.

Awakened and Alive

Well it's a new year, and with the new year comes new lessons and things that will hopefully push us to be better than what we are now. Since being here in Thailand, I have learned things and seen things that will stick with me until I die. I can say first hand that sometimes the world is just awful. It's hard and cold, and I look at people over here and some times think, Why does this happen? Why do they have to suffer? I have sat on the floor crying with little girls wondering why they had to go through what they've been through. I have held little babies in villages that are so small and feeble from hunger. I have seen what poverty can do to families by pushing them into things they wouldn't normally do. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes I just cry at the thought of where my little Eden house girls used to be. This past year has definelty been a year of not just looking at the hardship from across the way but about once again letting it affect every part of me, emotionally and spiritually.

I've almost been here 2 years and it's like these lessons and life cycles come in waves. When you first get here, you're so pumped about new adventures, and new people, and you're just ready and willing to do anything. And about a year into it, you start to get tired of seeing all the bad, all the hurting. So somewhere along the way, your heart slowly starts turning cold. As if you don't want to hear it anymore. As if it's not right across the street. And you start building these walls. To where you find yourself locking out everything that brought you there in the first place. But then at another unknown point something happens a particular event maybe, and all of the sudden you remember why, you're there. And that baby you're holding isn't just another skinny underfed baby, it's a person, who could someday change the world. And then once again it's like this life force rushes into you, and all that joy and hope comes back. Purpose returns and you are filled again with enough love to spread to yourself and everyone. Awakened from this deep sleep you never even knew you were in.

This next year I want to be constantly washed over with purpose. I don't want a day to go by and at the end of it I say, well what did I actually do? I want new adventures and new people to love. I want to be so consumed with love. I want to hold that baby and see the person that she could be. There is hope in new life. There is hope in new beginnings. There is hope when you find yourself closed in by the walls you created. Break them all down again. Every last one. Feel again. Let the awful things of this world hurt you. Carry grace with you. It's a new year. So be washed in purpose, letting go of the numbness. Feel the heat, it is there. Add to the fire. Create your own fire. 2015 here I am. Raw. And very much awakened and alive.

Living in clouds

I think admiring the clouds for their beauty is needed. Looking at them, with all their fluffiness, sheerness, and magnitude is the perspective to take on. Living in them however can leave you in a scary unfamiliar place that was never intended to be lived in.

I was reminded of this about a couple weeks ago. Probably by far the hardest week I've had being here. Everything seemed as if it was wrong. Things that I try to keep separate and compartmentalized all seemed to clash into this one messy pot of disaster. I find myself wearing a lot of hats while living and working over here, and sometimes it is heavy and complex. And with that complexity comes a real need for understanding and being ok with the realities at hand. Sometimes this heaviness turns into us making up truths about all these things so that we can cope with the hard things. I found myself creating false joys to simply numb myself to seeing what's exactly in front of my face. The reality is that everyday I walk by someone hurting, starving, being abused, or neglected. The reality is that we are trying to get precious girls out of awful places. And the truth is that sometimes that gets real messy really fast.

And I found myself living in clouds all high on everything that's fluffy and shiny. I had forgotten the reality of what we are actually doing here. And a couple weeks ago all that was lifted, reality set in, and I saw once again why we are here. The complete messiness of it, I felt again the heaviness of it in my own personal life. And at first my head didn't like that now I wasn't living in the clouds with all things that are good. But then my heart remembered what it is to feel again. Numbness gone. Pain. Heartbreak, and in that moment I realized that this is where I'm supposed to live. I'm supposed to live in the reality where all the hurting is. But amongst all the hurting bring this unexplainable joy and love despite it all. Seeing the pain and feeling it, is ok, letting it creep into your actual daily life, is ok, wallowing in it, is ok. But that's not the end of the story. Your Maker offers this over abounding hope and redemption. When all you want to do is cry, somehow you get joy, because you know the ending to the story, and it's a beautiful one.

Lets stop numbing ourselves with artificial joys because we don't want to see the bad. Lets stop finding joy in things that are not eternal. Lets look at the bad, square on in the face. Lets not just cry but hurt and actually feel everything that the suffering are feeling. If we do that we will begin to look like that Man we claim to follow. It will go against everything we've been taught, but the hopeless will start to see that glimmer and true joy will be restored.

Unravelled

Sometimes it takes something really simple to snap you back into reality. Sometimes you're just going going and you forget to stop, evaluate, and look. And for me this weekend me and my long haired man took off on our motorbike, and while passing rice field after rice field, and mountain after mountain, it all kinda hit me on the back of that motorcycle.

I could've never told ya that we would be in Thailand doing the things we're doing. After graduation I would have never when asked what I was up to next,  have said oh I'll be in Thailand, loving, sweating, and feeding hope to some Thais. I mean it's almost comical of all the things that have happened from when I started college to finishing to now. I actually laugh out loud sometimes at how controlling I was, and how organized my life used to look. I mean I used to freak out about if my hair was gonna be dry before I left my dorm, now I freak out about whether or not my little Eden House girls are grasping how to love like Christ did. But that's the beauty of God's goodness, is that when everything you thought you have put together nicely, He will unravel it in seconds. I've come to realize that nothing I make can ever be as beautiful as something that God will make.  So I need to stop pushing for my own agenda. God knows the desires of my heart. Surrender people is where it's at. When you can sit back and say to God take this little life of mine, use, push, run, create whatever you want of it....that's where freedom is. And looking back on these past couple years, they have been filled with all sorts of goodies but also lots of tears, lots of building and rebuilding, lots of burning old and yucky, lots of planting, lots of renewing. But that's it isn't it. That's life. And driving on the back of that motorbike brought me back to that. Life is good, when it's in the Hands of the Maker. Let Him unravel everything you have planned for yourself, I promise it will be far more beautiful than anything you could have ever imagined. 

Not putting our foot in our mouth

Today I was reading an amazing blog entry from this woman who claims to be the very worst missionary. And what she said was very insightful as to a reality that a lot of time we choose not to see. I want to propose a challenging idea that might rub some of you the wrong way. And honestly I hope it does, because these thoughts definitely have me squirming.

Most of the time people have this perception of what life looks like for an overseas missionary. And I can promise you its not all digging trenches, feeding the hungry, and being selfless. Honestly and quite frankly there are days that I question if I'm being and doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

I sip lattes, try to find air condition restaurants, go to the movie theaters, use my iPhone, go shopping way to often, and sometimes don't finish all my food. I'm tired of people not seeing if for what it is. Now in this honesty, I selfishly choose these things when my Thai brothers and sisters around me, sometimes go days without food. While some have had the same pair of pants for years, and I'm looking for my 20th pair. I advocate against child labor while wearing clothes that were probably made by these very children. 

Now are any of these things individually the thing that's bad......no. I love coffee, probably on an unhealthy level, but how can I enjoy this or that if my brothers and sisters can't. I mean if we're gonna step across the line people, we need to just step across it. We can't say one thing and do another. It's a contradiction, it's confusing, and a horrible example to others as to what this following Christ looks like. Now this is hard to hear, and we will make every excuse in the book as to how the two can go hand in hand, but I'm telling you right now, they never will aline. If we're gonna call ourselves Christ lovers then we must feed the sheep. And not a misrepresentation of who He was. Now this is a lesson that I will probably continue to learn and struggle with, and the contradiction lies even now as I write this in an air conditioned coffee shop drinking my latte. I'm just kinda tired of being fake. I want to give so much I have nothing left. I wanna love so hard, that there is nothing left of myself. I want to be hungry with my brothers and sisters. I want the lines of class and wealth to disappear, and the only thing uniting us is that we have the same Maker. If it means not wanting things to erase those lines or giving everything till they disappear, I will do it. Sometimes you have to just look at it for what it is. There should be no distinction between people. Some should not live in big white houses, while some live in cardboard boxes. I shouldn't advocate and then turn and put my foot in my mouth by buying and funding it. In my life I want there to be no confusion as to who I belong to. This is something hard to hear for many, but together lets make it undeniable that Christ is our King and that we take His words seriously. 

Bananas and puzzles

So we've been back in the swing of things here in Thailand, except for the massive earthquake we had and the military coupe, everything is somewhat back to normal. Our girls are back from their villages and with them came a new little one. She is four and about the cutest thing you've ever seen. Her name is little "Bee" and boy I'll tell ya she's a stinger.

The first night of having this new little one, we noticed that she had this awful rash and open sores over a lot of her body. She wouldn't go to sleep, because she was itchy. Now I don't know about you but this is probably the worse thing ever.....when you've got a rash, it's 102 degrees outside, you have no air condition, and youre trying to sleep. Not a good combination, and to top it off she's surrounded with all these people she doesn't know and in a place she's unfamiliar with. Naturally my instinct is to help, I mean this poor baby girl is miserable. So I go get some itchy benydryll spray to maybe help her stop itching so she can go to sleep. Well I bring her over to me with everyone watching trying to figure out what to do, and I start spraying the rash. She jumps up, and starts screaming holding the area I had just sprayed. I was flabbergasted. I don't remember itchy spray ever stinging that badly. I mean she keeps crying. She's wailing. She is over in the corner not coming out because the foreigner sprayed her with something that felt like fire on her skin. Needless to say after that moment I was like the plague to her. Anytime she would see me, she would run in the other direction. She was so scared of me, because I was the bad lady.

I felt awful, all I wanted to do was help, but she didn't understand that, she just knew I had caused her pain. So about a day ago, I was determined to win back her trust and hopefully her love. I mean she's so cute, it's awful being hated by someone so cute. So I went and got a puzzle and opened up my door to my room. I sat on the floor and started eating a banana I had brought up to snack on. And before I knew it she was walking by my room. At first she just walked by very quickly. Then I couldn't believe she walked by again, but a little slower and saw the banana I was eating. But kept walking. The next time she stopped right at my door, and I decided to go out on a limb. I held out the banana and said in thai, " aow mai?" Which in thai means, you want some? And she just looked at me and sat down right at the edge of my room, right in the doorway. Still afraid she reached for the banana and started chomping away. So I decided to start playing with the puzzle by myself. She just watched me trying to figure me out. When I looked at her and asked her if she wanted to play with the puzzle. She just starred then scooted closer and closer. Before I knew it, we were talking, putting the puzzle together, and laughing. After that we were like best fiends, holding hands and all.

In writing all this I learned a simple lesson through precious Bee. That people are normally won by the most mundane things. For Bee it was a banana and a puzzle. But in saying that people are also not won by the simplest things. Me spraying that on little Bee summed up her opinion of me. I was bad. But giving her a banana and playing a little puzzle game showed her I wasn't. We need to always be careful on how we treat others, good intentions or not. Doing small things for people will always pay out. So today do the small things, do them with love, because the small things win hearts.

Life speakers

It seems to be that no matter what I do here, my heart and my everyday life seem to always collide into this beautiful mess that becomes this reassurance that I am doing what I’m suppose to be doing.

As a teacher in a foreign country, daily I am faced with things that might seem strange or unfamiliar but in reality, it is considered so normal or mundane to my students. For instance, I am teaching my students about Global issues, things such as Aids, HIV, human trafficking, wars and internal conflicts, and refugee camps to name a few. And this unit is hard to teach not only because there is a language barrier as far as trying to communicate the right information but also that some of these subjects are hard to discuss. So the other day I’m prompting my students to think of one issue that they do not like in this world. And then come up with one solution as to what they think the solution should be for the problem.

Now I had a variety of answers from bad things such as rape, war, child soldiers, hunger, poverty, and orphans. But the one that jumped off the page and into my heart was the answer of this little girl who said…. “I do not like when bad man take advantage of little girls.” Now most of you know my heart, and this is it. That is one reason why I live and work also at Eden House, which is a prevention home to help stop this.

So automatically my heart went out to this little girl. Here one of my students completely separate from my work with Eden house is being affected by this vicious cycle. And then my thoughts were, “wait, is this happening to you? Where did this happen? I’m gonna find who did this to you and go make him make things right! I will stop bad men like this! I will make them pay!”

But then I looked down at her answer for the solution to this horrific problem that seems so prevalent here, and it was this, “ Just tell the bad man to do great things instead.” That simple. Tell him to stop and do great things instead. Her solution to this problem is to speak life even into the filthiest of people. To speak life. She didn’t say, create more laws to stop pedophiles. She didn’t say go do harm to him in revenge for what he has done to her. She didn’t say beat him till he has learned his lesson. She said to speak life into him so that he becomes a better man.

Now I don’t know about you, but this cuts straight to my soul. This makes me rethink everything I used to think about these kinds of situations. This kind of wisdom astounds me to have obtained it at such a young age. But its not just wisdom, it’s a love and outlook that humanity can be better. Sometimes we make things so hard. We want things to be better or we want to help out here, or do this or that to make the world a better place. But honestly it is quite simple. We have to speak life into each other. We have to believe that even though we are covered in all the mud that we can still be washed off.  The American church today needs to grasp this small little concept spoken by a little Thai girl half way around the world. We as the church need to be life givers, life speakers, and life dwellers. Even to the muddiest of people. Even to the ones that don’t deserve it. Christ washed us. So we need to wash them.

Being in this land has made me realize that love will always win no matter what battle it is. We may think to stop evil you have to have extensive plans elaborate with charts and statistical numbers, but in reality its quite simple. Love. Speak life. And love some more.